Credits per hour, Then and Now

[Andreas Valdez]

I started playing in 2015, very casually and mostly “organically” without external tools. By 2018 I had a DBS and about 4mil, with Steam showing I’d logged 100 hours or so. I gave up on the game because although I had much love for original Elite, Frontier and FFE the game just seemed like a total grind compared to FFE where the Panther was fairly achievable within the timespan of the narrative missions (which were finite IIRC). Started playing again a couple of weeks ago, using Inara and so on, and now very close to an Anaconda. Haven’t engineered or bought anything since the Horizons season pass, but the ability to progress in the game seems very much improved where now I can enjoy the tasks I’m doing for PowerPlay or missions without having to grind for hours.

The big difference is the external tools help understand the galaxy and progress rapidly - the type of market data etc available in-game is dreadful by comparison.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I never understood why core mining commodities (but only some) fetched 6 digits per tonne - maybe to get people into the activity?

A combination of three things.

1) The original (Beta) mining design didn't have them at all. You'd open the core and it'd be a bunch of Rutile, which wasn't particularly valuable to start with, and was a much slower way of obtaining Rutile if you did somehow need it than laser mining would have been. So the feedback was pretty strongly "this is a lot more fun than laser mining but there's no reason to actually do it". So core mining was added very much as a last-minute thing late in Beta, with perhaps less time than normal to think about what earning rates might be desirable.

That said, if it hadn't been for the next two things, it would have been reasonably balanced with laser-mining as it was then (lower earning rate at the most optimised end, but easier to get a good result with less effort than that). Sure, you'd have been getting low six-digits per tonne, but you could get mid five-digits per tonne laser-mining Painite and it was possible to get 10x the tonnes per hour that way.

2) The mining rework was introduced at the same time as a major BGS rework, one of the consequences of which was that for the first time multiple BGS states could apply to a faction at once, which meant that the market effects of those states stacked multiplicatively. That's where the really excessive prices came from - the price started at low six digits, but then got doubled three times by a rare [1] state combination to become low seven digits instead.

3) Probably because they were added at the last minute, they also had their demand regeneration rate set to "infinite", which meant that those prices were stable as long as the state lasted (usually 2-3 days), rather than only lasting as long as it took the first player to find them and sell to them.


[1] But the bubble had 20,000 systems back then, so something which happened maybe 0.5% of the time or less in any particular system still had plenty of usable examples.

 

[Oh Seven Commander]

Seems like some of the thread is assuming the new players are like old players who’ve been around for years and were to able to grow with the game tbh.

Most of the 30yr old+ space fans likely already bought this game years ago. Some didn’t but a lot did. The younger generations often don’t play games like older people do

Sure there are exceptions, but the younger crowd is very likely to look up a guide and blast into millions in the first few days if they can. And I don’t blame em.

New players have zero incentive to take months to upgrade a ship. There are over 2 dozen ships or something, engineering, a galaxy to explore, fleet carriers, colonization, powerplay, galactic mini-hubs to visit, expeditions, Thargoid combat, PvP, etc etc.

Why would someone want to take months just to get a krait?

 

[Morbad]

The image is from 2015. It's a rare trade goods route you could start doing effectively with a cobra, for a couple million an hour and it was considered good/decent credits. During this time, you had to progress ship to ship and with the increased capability came modest increases in credit earning potential. Those of who did the imperial slaves smuggling runs back then remember that being a "gold rush" back then.

I'm not saying that the credits/hr back then was the correct balancing. But it does seem we are now very far in the other direction, where an independent pilot wanting to progress on their own can go from sidey to an anaconda with one maybe two ships in between, in less than a week without really exploiting much of anything.

One of the things I really liked about my experience as a new player back then was the ship progression. I'm not against someone skipping the progression if they want to through a squadron boosting someone, but the current balance of the game isn't aligned with the way ship progression is laid out in really any way.

I had a blast (toying with pirates) during the old (Jan 2015) rare trade:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G81MwN0Amh0

So is just like to ask, is ship progression still important? It was for me, but with the current iteration, maybe it's not anymore? Space legs is a whole new experience path for new players, Fleet carriers change the game too. Engineering is its own progression tree as well, that's more of a hard lock on exploring and combat though than trade. Just something I noticed and wanted to see what opinions are.

Depends.

The only progress that matters for me is the acquisition of experience; everything else has been eroded or diluted to near meaninglessness. I find it important to know how ships perform, to have a firm grasp of what they can and cannot do. This is something that means actually getting in and flying them. It's enjoyable on a personal piloting level, but also translates into a myriad of other scenarios. I will have quite a bit of work to do when my CMDR meanders back to the bubble and has the opportunity to purchase these new vessels...

...that could take a while though. I found the perfect planet to test shadows on and I'm not having my CMDR leave until the current bugs with them are addressed.

Credits are pretty easy, but earning enough for a FC stills takes time. So does reputation gain for Imp and Fed ships. PP still takes a while to get you those PP modules, you have to get the mats, perform the unlock tasks, and grab the commodities to unlock engineers, and the guardian modules/weapons/fighters still require putting in the work that entails.
I don't really feel like it is unfair to me that new players have a bit easier of a time earning those credits than I did. Months to my first Python, a year to my first Anaconda. They don't have access to the 18 month period where we could make 250-750M and hour mining VO/LTD either.

I am not a fan of pulling up the ladder after I climb it. Leave the ladder, and maybe hang an extra ladder for the ones coming up behind us.

I don't have it better than I did in 2015 and those coming up 'behind' me might have an easier time reach some arbitrary numerical goal, but they'll never experience the game I enjoyed, because that game is long gone.

Regarding the pseudo-economy specifically, I don't think baking in an inflationary money supply because some people had access to periods of ridiculous rewards is good for the game. Take that VO/LTD example...my CMDR has never held either of those in his hold; he's never been a pirate, and his total mining profit since the last mandatory reset near the end of 2014 is under eleven million credits...extending those potential profits to me does not make my game better, it just further degrades my experience by making a silly situation permanent.

This can be best summed up in that neither end of the credit curve is acceptable, and the middle is boring. Therefore it's an unsolvable riddle. Let us discuss!

(This accounts for maybe 98%* of the forums topics; the rest are neat screenshots and forum PVP).

I have a solution. Implement an actual economy, where everything in circulation has to come from somewhere, where prices vary both with the supply of commodities and with the supply and velocity of money; then wipe the entire game and have everyone start from scratch.

 

[Knuttin Atoll]

Thanks @Ian Doncaster good write up as per usual, honestly I'd forgotten about half of the stuff and also wasn't involved in the BGS at all back then. I guess the recurring problem is that Frontier never seem to look at balancing holistically and rather focus on narrow scenarios (such as new mechanics) without performing any regression analysis on existing other areas. I get that they feel having to tread lightly for fear of disgruntling some players that are adverse to change but I wish they were more ruthless when it comes to the scope of their balance passes.

New players have zero incentive to take months to upgrade a ship.

I get that things taking months (or even years!) in MMOs may be normalised for plenty of people but - even as a long term player - I do find it pretty ridiculous on the surface of it really. From a dev viewpoint I suppose it is a handy mechanism to cover up a lack of content / replayability of content though.

 

[Cheese Helmet]

I have a solution. Implement an actual economy, where everything in circulation has to come from somewhere, where prices vary both with the supply of commodities and with the supply and velocity of money; then wipe the entire game and have everyone start from scratch.

I think this would add a lot and fit well with the direction FC and colonization are taking things

 

[Jmanis]

The image is from 2015. It's a rare trade goods route you could start doing effectively with a cobra, for a couple million an hour and it was considered good/decent credits. During this time, you had to progress ship to ship and with the increased capability came modest increases in credit earning potential. Those of who did the imperial slaves smuggling runs back then remember that being a "gold rush" back then.

I'm not saying that the credits/hr back then was the correct balancing. But it does seem we are now very far in the other direction, where an independent pilot wanting to progress on their own can go from sidey to an anaconda with one maybe two ships in between, in less than a week without really exploiting much of anything.

One of the things I really liked about my experience as a new player back then was the ship progression. I'm not against someone skipping the progression if they want to through a squadron boosting someone, but the current balance of the game isn't aligned with the way ship progression is laid out in really any way.

So is just like to ask, is ship progression still important? It was for me, but with the current iteration, maybe it's not anymore? Space legs is a whole new experience path for new players, Fleet carriers change the game too. Engineering is its own progression tree as well, that's more of a hard lock on exploring and combat though than trade. Just something I noticed and wanted to see what opinions are.

Always remember... this got removed for being "OP"

 

[LightningEffect]

I immediately went from my sidewinder with 16m in the bank to a T9 jumpstarter which brought me to 11b within two weeks.

But i wouldn't have stayed if i didn't have that opportunity, for me the ships in this game is a tool. I don't enjoy progressing through ships i have no interest in, for me it's the experience of flying around, doing activities in the game. Yes 100m an hour is now very common, but it doesn't dimish the experience at all for me, i still have to play the game to unlock engineers, buy modules and equipment.

The only negative i see is fleet carriers are now easy to infinitely upkeep. I have enough in my reserve for 9 years, which will clog up the servers of i stop playing. But that can be worked around if Fdev decides there are too many inactive ones.

 

[Stealthie]

FWIW, I started a new alt, went to high cz in the sidewinder and followed syssec ships around. A few hours later i was in a Cobra mkV, the next day it was A rated and the alt started engineering and doing PP. Felt pretty good to me like that. I think a noob can have many hours of fun before they've exhausted all these game loops.

I've recently been playing through Fallout 4 again and it always surprises me just how short the main story questline is.
Visit Diamond City, rescue Sam Valentine, find/kill Kellogg, find Virgil, kill Courser, access Institute and then pick an ending.
That's it. Done.

If you've played F4, you'll know that there's a whole heap of stuff you "should" do in order to facilitate those things but the actual questline is probably less than 2 hours of play.
So, how come my first playthrough took about 3 months?

Point being, in ED as with most other games, you really only get the "new player experience" once.
A BIG part of that experience is the learning curve required to understand what you want/need to do and how to accomplish those things.
Once you've gained that knowledge it's impossible to relive the "new player experience" because you know exactly what's required to achieve any goal.

Honestly, I would never advise somebody to wipe their savegame for ED because there's really no point.
Regardless of whether you plan to do something different next time around, all it means is that you'll spend time regaining access to the things you do want when you could simply stop doing the things you don't want at any time.

Also, as I've said before, one of EDs biggest strengths and it's biggest weaknesses is that there's almost nothing about it that's exclusive to rich, experienced, players.
A new player in a Sidey can indulge in almost every aspect of gameplay that a veteran does in an Anaconda supported by a Fleet Carrier.

So, what?

Thing is, credits are/were about the only thing controlling a player's "progression" through the game.
Start off in a Sidey, do stuff, buy better ship, do stuff, buy even better ship, do stuff, end up with fleet of huge expensive ships, carry on doing stuff, become frustrated that there's nothing new to do.
That, at least, created the illusion that progression through the game was, erm, progressive and a player could feel like they were making progress until, eventually, they realised that they were doing the same stuff over and over.
With the current state of credits in-game it's more a case of Start off in Sidey, do stuff, buy Anaconda, do stuff, do stuff, do stuff, become frustrated that there's nothing new to do.
Objectively, the result is the same but the player's experience is much less fulfilling.

And?

At the risk of stating the obvious, ED is a sandbox game in the truest sense of the term.
There's sand, seashells and some pebbles (metaphorically speaking).
It doesn't matter if you're playing in the sand with a plastic bucket and spade you bought in poundland or with a fleet of radio-controlled tanks and bulldozers.
Hopefully, at some point, you'll decide that you enjoy playing in the sand and you'll stick around to play with other folks who like playing in the sand too.

Progression is what provides the opportunity for a player to decide they enjoy simply being in the ED universe.
When progression is truncated, it's more likely a player will simply decide there's "nothing else to do" and abandon the game before they decide that they simply enjoy playing in the sandbox.

 

[kofeyh]

.. I still believe FCs should be cheaper by a couple of billion at least, as the gap between the most expensive A-rated ship and an FC is still too large.

They are an investment that pays back fairly quickly. I would say they are not overpriced, so much as in desperate need of some of the newer functions being added. Material trader and taxi dude would be good. Vastly more helpful than the outrageously expensive-per-week FPS vendor who just has stock gear.

Ultimately, credits and ships have long since stopped being the primary progression metric. Arguably they never were. It is, was, and will always be time.

Frontier have moved on from being Helicopter Parents and I think the recent(ish) resurgence of the game shows a more hands-off and proactive approach has more benefit over hands-on reactive, does actually work for more people.

 

[kofeyh]

I have a solution. Implement an actual economy, where everything in circulation has to come from somewhere, where prices vary both with the supply of commodities and with the supply and velocity of money; then wipe the entire game and have everyone start from scratch.

There is an actual economy where player actions affect what goes on. Enough players can exhaust supplies at a station. System states can affect prices of commodities or availability. And so on. Is it infinite in scope? no. Welcome to compromise. Every game has it.

Also, "start from scratch" isn't a solution. It will be adapted to, causing calls to "start start from scratch", which will be adapted to, causing calls to "start start from scratch", which will be adapted to, causing calls to "start start from scratch", which will be adapted to, causing calls to "start start from scratch", which will be adapted to..

The ability for this forum to grossly underestimate the ability for the community to adapt, is an amusing and very common foible.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I immediately went from my sidewinder with 16m in the bank to a T9 jumpstarter which brought me to 11b within two weeks.

But i wouldn't have stayed if i didn't have that opportunity, for me the ships in this game is a tool. I don't enjoy progressing through ships i have no interest in, for me it's the experience of flying around, doing activities in the game. Yes 100m an hour is now very common, but it doesn't dimish the experience at all for me, i still have to play the game to unlock engineers, buy modules and equipment.

The only negative i see is fleet carriers are now easy to infinitely upkeep. I have enough in my reserve for 9 years, which will clog up the servers of i stop playing. But that can be worked around if Fdev decides there are too many inactive ones.

and this is the challenge FD face. you want a sandbox game with toys given quickly. I want a start as a skint pilot with a handful of credits which dreams of grandeur trying to make it big in the galaxy earning credits for my next upgrade
both are valid requests but imo the game can't really cater for both at the same time. as such we need to look at the game FD pitched to us and go from there. it is fair to say FD have had mixed messages over the years about that BUT I must admit I would never have backed a sandbox game.
luckily for me I did get that game I hoped for, for a few years at least

as for starting from scratch. it's not for me, I like filling out my codex and what not and only have so much time. I do do kind of mini wipes where I move to another new region of space bankrupt myself (usually buy an expensive ship and load it with top modules then. mothball and start again with a small ship I may have neglected before.)

it's not a wipe as such as I still have my elite rank etc but it's as far as I go

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I've recently been playing through Fallout 4 again and it always surprises me just how short the main story questline is.
Visit Diamond City, rescue Sam Valentine, find/kill Kellogg, find Virgil, kill Courser, access Institute and then pick an ending.
That's it. Done.

Yes, a lot of things are like that.

Lots of people claim that FE2/FFE had much better game balance than Elite Dangerous does now.

FE2/FFE you could get a Panther Clipper in 3 hours if you speed-ran it [1]. Very few of us actually did that back then (even with the benefit of experience!)


[1] Because FE2/FFE's earnings are so heavily biased towards trade as an activity, which scales so strongly with cargo hold size, the first hour of that is spent upgrading the starter Eagle to an Adder. After that you get a ship and cargo hold upgrade pretty much every few trips and the limitation soon becomes "getting lucky with enough crew on the board at once to make the jump to the next ship up" rather than your credit balance.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

the way I see it credits are done for now. it's like the hyper inflation in Germany in 1920s in terms of amounts but where costs don't change.
if it were my game I would introduce a load of new equipment (such as the SCO drive) but these could not be bought for credits. instead for instance you find a damaged drive which you could salvage and take to an engineer. he then asks for scans of various other ships and gives you clues of where to look (not set in stone so unique to us) and we then do missions and tasks to get information and eventually the engineer creates a new SCO drive - which if it gets damaged we could then choose to salvage from our wreck and (s)he could repair again using some salvage but isn't replaced under insurance .
the devil is in the details and you could argue that is engineering that we have now with the tech broker but flying round in circles in a titan wreck for a few hrs waiting for a drive component to spawn in randomly isn't what I have in mind.
but to me this is the only way I could imagine FD getting back on track to the launch game ethos of earning stuff to progress which I enjoyed.
it's not all bad. the CGs where you can earn gear if you do enough stuff I like doing and last year's thargoid stuff was great (sadly I missed most of it but that's on me)

 

[Knuttin Atoll]

They are an investment that pays back fairly quickly. I would say they are not overpriced, so much as in desperate need of some of the newer functions being added. Material trader and taxi dude would be good. Vastly more helpful than the outrageously expensive-per-week FPS vendor who just has stock gear.

I'm purely talking about the initial road to obtain a FC, not whether there's a good ROI owning one - not something I ever really cared about since I saw it as a QoL feature with an in-game cost. The weekly maintenance is fair, it's just the purchasing price I find too high because it encourages grinding for credits (I had to resort to it every time I decided I wanted one).

Ultimately, credits and ships have long since stopped being the primary progression metric. Arguably they never were. It is, was, and will always be time.

Agree with your first sentence, disagree with the second, agree with the third.

In the early days, credits were the restricting factor when it came to purchasing and outfitting ships. Part of the core player experience was to make do with lesser quality modules and slowly improving your ship over time, which made you connect with your ship and you appreciated the incremental improvements the better rated modules would bring.

Frontier have moved on from being Helicopter Parents and I think the recent(ish) resurgence of the game shows a more hands-off and proactive approach has more benefit over hands-on reactive, does actually work for more people.

Genuinely not sure if I understand what you're trying to say with this... Frontier were never helicopter parents, the game has always been incredibly obtuse - and just to be clear, I absolutely prefer games that keep handholding to an absolute minimum as I like to figure things out on my own (I don't usually RTFM), but then Frontier go well beyond that to the extent that to this day the game heavily relies on third party sources for how things work and tools to make things work (going back to Fleet Carriers - if you want to make proper money by trading with one, you absolutely need an Inara account ... or Odyssey engineering, without Inara recipe lists I would never have bothered with G5'ing and engineering gear because it's such a frustrating and barebones in-game experience).

 

[Stealthie]

In the early days, credits were the restricting factor when it came to purchasing and outfitting ships. Part of the core player experience was to make do with lesser quality modules and slowly improving your ship over time, which made you connect with your ship and you appreciated the incremental improvements the better rated modules would bring.

Absolutely.

I know it sounds like a "I had a tough time so I want you to have a tough time too" thing but I swear it's not.

The best time I had in ED was back when I was flying a CM3 and could just about afford to buy my way into an AspX.
I'd run a few missions in the CM3 to give me credits to, say, purchase new thrusters for the AspX and then I'd fly the AspX for a couple of days, get into combat and realise I desperately needed better weapons so I had to go back to the Cobra, run missions in that to earn more credits then I'd get back in the Asp and go and buy, perhaps, a pair of beam lasers.

The progress was being controlled but you didn't really notice it because it felt like you were the one deciding that you needed to make some advancement and then figure out how to achieve that.

These days you'll have enough credits to just stop at a suitable station and throw whatever parts you want at your ship but then you feel like you need to engineer those parts to make your ship work properly... and engineering can feel like a more obvious "roadblock" because it requires you to go and do stuff that you don't really want to do.

Also, on a related note, back when I was flying my first AspX I was never short of engineering mat's because I could only buy new modules slowly and I was collecting enough mat's during normal gameplay to carry out the required engineering.
These days, because you can buy ships/modules so easily, a player can end-up with a heap of ships that need a lot of engineering so they need to deliberately spend time hunting for mat's, which only magnifies the "roadblock" feeling.

 

[Knuttin Atoll]

Absolutely.

I know it sounds like a "I had a tough time so I want you to have a tough time too" thing but I swear it's not.

The best time I had in ED was back when I was flying a CM3 and could just about afford to buy my way into an AspX.
I'd run a few missions in the CM3 to give me credits to, say, purchase new thrusters for the AspX and then I'd fly the AspX for a couple of days, get into combat and realise I desperately needed better weapons so I had to go back to the Cobra, run missions in that to earn more credits then I'd get back in the Asp and go and buy, perhaps, a pair of beam lasers.

The progress was being controlled but you didn't really notice it because it felt like you were the one deciding that you needed to make some advancement and then figure out how to achieve that.

These days you'll have enough credits to just stop at a suitable station and throw whatever parts you want at your ship but then you feel like you need to engineer those parts to make your ship work properly... and engineering can feel like a more obvious "roadblock" because it requires you to go and do stuff that you don't really want to do.

Also, on a related note, back when I was flying my first AspX I was never short of engineering mat's because I could only buy new modules slowly and I was collecting enough mat's during normal gameplay to carry out the required engineering.
These days, because you can buy ships/modules so easily, a player can end-up with a heap of ships that need a lot of engineering so they need to deliberately spend time hunting for mat's, which only magnifies the "roadblock" feeling.

Not to hammer the point home, but I compare it with how car progression worked in the early Gran Turismos vs modern Forza games (haven't played the recent GTs so not sure what they're like these days).

In GT1/2/3/4, I got a small amount of credits, to buy some banger and maybe add one or two tuning parts. The challenge was then to progress though race events and slowly obtain better gear to improve the car, fine tune its settings, or buy another car (credits permitting). I absolutely loved the concept even though modern players would consider that boring, glacial progress.

Switch to Forza anything, where you get gifted cars left right and centre for doing very little, there's even a slot machine system where you can win more credits, cars, clothing (yes, in a racing game), etc. Without having to do anything for it. It just cheapens the experience and sense of achievement and is imo a form of gluttony that is really offputting.

 

[ꝁestrel]

I actually think the balance we have now is pretty good.

Every game system (combat, mining, etc) has good rewards as a baseline. Whether it's materials or credits. You can hop on once or twice per week, do a few missions, make enough to pay your fleet carrier upkeep, and still increase your balance a little. Over time that adds up. But then if you want to create a massive credit buffer (for whatever reason) you can grind out some exobio, massacre missions, or whatever is the big credit earner.

Currently I have 16 ships all built for different tasks. All of them are fully G5 engineered. And my fleet carrier is covered for years. This keeps me coming back and having fun. I can just do whatever I'm in the mood for upon logging in.

Ships as progression always seemed weird to me. Back when I wanted an Anaconda (long time ago) I remember being annoyed at how long I needed to wait until I could earn enough for one. And by the time I earned enough to fully outfit it (plus rebuys) I was tired of the game and took a break. Then when I came back I wasn't as excited about flying an Anaconda anymore.

I think this is a common problem with games that lock gameplay behind "progression". Like those single player games where your character has a bunch of cool abilities. But you only unlock them all toward the end so you barely get to use them.

 

[LightningEffect]

and this is the challenge FD face. you want a sandbox game with toys given quickly. I want a start as a skint pilot with a handful of credits

Well both options are there. There is really nothing preventing you from not buying pre builts and advance naturally. I personally enjoy efficiency, and that's often in the "endgame" i don't really care too much about the journey i usually speedrun leveling.

Limiting one sides ability and forcing them to progress naturally has clearly not worked out for Fdev the last 8 years, the game was dying and has now been sort of revived, and in my opinion the pre builts have had an impact, a new player like me can jump straight into bulk hauling and learn on the fly.

Elite has an almost perfect blend for all people, it's not too p2w and people still have the option to grind naturally without being limited by the store.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Well both options are there. There is really nothing preventing you from not buying pre builts and advance naturally. I personally enjoy efficiency, and that's often in the "endgame" i don't really care too much about the journey i usually speedrun leveling.

Limiting one sides ability and forcing them to progress naturally has clearly not worked out for Fdev the last 8 years, the game was dying and has now been sort of revived, and in my opinion the pre builts have had an impact, a new player like me can jump straight into bulk hauling and learn on the fly.

Elite has an almost perfect blend for all people, it's not too p2w and people still have the option to grind naturally without being limited by the store.

I am not talking about the prebuilds. actually these days I am not that bothered if players want to splunk cash on ships so be it so long as earnable realistically in game. it's money for FD so..........
like you say it doesn't really effect me. not a huge fan of the free rebuy or the ability to fast travel one in when ever you want but maybe that is just my sense of fair play....even that does not really affect my game much.

but being able to run a handful of trivial data delivery missions or steal a single kill off an NPC in a haz res and instantly have enough cash for a cobra III and significant upgrades (this took me over 100hrs at launch).

THAT does effect my gameplay and there is no way I can escape that.