No doubt the same top 10 haulers, in their Cutters / T-9's would be in the top 10...
And I get accused of spohistry... (I'm being polite)
Latest CG, the clearest example of P2W in ED to date?
- Thread starter Agony_Aunt
- Start date
And I get accused of spohistry... (I'm being polite)
You are describing most amateur sports over the course of a season. Lots of people just have fun. Some people don't pay attention to their season standings and just drink beer while others take it seriously and really want to win. Regardless playing football isn't 'technically a sport'. It is a sport. Where are you going with your analogy? I don't understand the relevance.
How do you stand on the issue of darts? Sport or not?
Not sure. Its a great drinking game. I'm not good at it but its fun.
Even if you're not taking it seriously, a football game has a clearly defined winner and loser. This would be more like if everyone was declared the winner just for showing up.
All this PTW I do not get. Sure with the new clipper mk2 you get more cargo space, but it will boil down to how much time do you have to play. You may haul more but have less time to play. You may play more, but listen to music as well and do other things as well. So tons per hour are less then someone that hauls less per trip but is is more diligent and not being distracted (and makes more trips per hours). So in the end the one who can haul less then the Panther MK2, can actually deliver more in that same hour time frame. As for play to win again I use the Imperial Cutter as my example, which requires the rank of Duke to even purchase (at 600 million credits before upgrades). So to get Duke you need to earn it playing the game so not everyone can have access to it, and so I have a advantage over those that never worried about gaining ranks for the Empire. So no Imperial Cutter and 784 tons of cargo space as I use. Not to mention it is a beautiful looking ship but handles like a whale. I love it none the less originally outfitted for mining but reequipped and stripped down for the community goal.
In any event what it boils down to is play time and a ship that can haul a lot of cargo, not necessarily the most, but the people who can play longer and enjoy hauling. Otherwise I can't see someone hauling 211,200 tons (currently) the lowest of the top 10 and a high of (currently) 342,700 tons.
To make the top 25% currently requires only 16,833 tons of cargo (a far cry from 211,200 tones for the top 10), easily doable by many cargo ships buyable in the game. If you want to make the top 10 you would need to be a dedicated player who enjoys hauling cargo and have a lot of time to make that top 10. The ship isn't the reason (it may help), but not the only reason. Play time > then hauling capacity. Just enjoy the game and if you feel that the MK2 is the only way to make the top 10, I think you are mistaken. Play time far out weighs cargo capacity in the long run, having both would be the winning combination, but even without the MK2, they would still make the top 10 if not the top spot by sheer play time and dedication.
I would be interested if anyone in the top 10 will post what ship they use and those closing in on the top 10 which they also use. For me top 25% is all I need. I made it on a Friday, Saturday (I only played form noon till 5PM )and a few hours on Sunday before leaving for a BBQ with my wife in the afternoon. It didn't take all that long honestly and I was doing other things during that time and not constantly playing.
In any event what it boils down to is play time and a ship that can haul a lot of cargo, not necessarily the most, but the people who can play longer and enjoy hauling. Otherwise I can't see someone hauling 211,200 tons (currently) the lowest of the top 10 and a high of (currently) 342,700 tons.
To make the top 25% currently requires only 16,833 tons of cargo (a far cry from 211,200 tones for the top 10), easily doable by many cargo ships buyable in the game. If you want to make the top 10 you would need to be a dedicated player who enjoys hauling cargo and have a lot of time to make that top 10. The ship isn't the reason (it may help), but not the only reason. Play time > then hauling capacity. Just enjoy the game and if you feel that the MK2 is the only way to make the top 10, I think you are mistaken. Play time far out weighs cargo capacity in the long run, having both would be the winning combination, but even without the MK2, they would still make the top 10 if not the top spot by sheer play time and dedication.
I would be interested if anyone in the top 10 will post what ship they use and those closing in on the top 10 which they also use. For me top 25% is all I need. I made it on a Friday, Saturday (I only played form noon till 5PM )and a few hours on Sunday before leaving for a BBQ with my wife in the afternoon. It didn't take all that long honestly and I was doing other things during that time and not constantly playing.
If you're unwilling to compromise on the basic principle of "pay-2-win bad", then I think that ship left the docking bay years ago. Probably to go get some DLC-exclusive engineering done.
But if you've got a more nuanced take, then the details are important. Details like, "can I achieve the full module reward in this CG without needing to fly a ship like the Panther Clipper which is currently available for Arx only?"
Since the answer to that question is "yes", the question then turns to whether or not one is willing or able to spend time or money to achieve one's goals in game. Which is a personal decision that we can only really answer for ourselves. Some of us are poor in time, but have the money equivalent to a takeaway meal that it costs to get an Arx ship. Others are money-poor but have the time to go without for now and wait around for credits release, or to accumulate the required Arx through gameplay. I don't think either is objectively right or wrong.
But if you've got a more nuanced take, then the details are important. Details like, "can I achieve the full module reward in this CG without needing to fly a ship like the Panther Clipper which is currently available for Arx only?"
Since the answer to that question is "yes", the question then turns to whether or not one is willing or able to spend time or money to achieve one's goals in game. Which is a personal decision that we can only really answer for ourselves. Some of us are poor in time, but have the money equivalent to a takeaway meal that it costs to get an Arx ship. Others are money-poor but have the time to go without for now and wait around for credits release, or to accumulate the required Arx through gameplay. I don't think either is objectively right or wrong.
I don't understand where your sports season analogy is going. Sports have scores. ED has scores[1]. Both are games. You are simply reinforcing that ED is a game filled with measurable scores.
[1] For almost every activity. Combat Rankings, Trade Rankings, PvP rankings, CG rankings, PP, BGS, there are numbers and stats galore all over the game and made available through third party tools. Even credits are a form of a game score. These are all measurable outcomes from the game being played.
I didn't make a sports season analogy. I said it would be like a 100m "race" where all you had to do was cross that distance sometime within a month, and everybody who managed to do that was declared the winner. That is to say, it's technically some kind of competition because you can lose by not doing what is required, but what is required is laughably easy, and it doesn't matter if you walk or spend money on a bike or something.
A fairly torturous analogy, granted.
I don't understand how this analogy applys to CGs. CGs have multiple ways of measuring scores including credits earned, player rankings, top 10, and overall #1. And most players are participating for rewards of some kind.
Yes, but none of the scores matter to anyone but you. Nobody else can even see your score. And the only important line to get across (getting the extra cargo racks) is a super low one that's trivially achieved in any kind of decent hauling ship.
Ok?
I'm not seeing the relevance. In the context of the original post why does this matter?The scores, stats, and rewards matter to the player, of course. That is how progress is measured. And in the case of CGs, how we can tell if we are getting close to receiving rewards. This all seems very obvious and way off topic.
No,
That might be true for <50% of the participants.
The other > 50% of the participants are obviously interested in something more than just the extra cargo racks.
The top 25% are absolutely interested in something more than extra cargo racks.
Edit: Really bad grammar correction
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It's only relevant because people keep insisting they're competing with one another when they're really not.Ok?
The scores, stats, and rewards matter to the player, of course. That is how progress is measured. And in the case of CGs, how we can tell if we are getting close to receiving rewards. This all seems very obvious and way off topic.
Yes, credits, which you can earn plenty of during this CG without buying a Panther Clipper and also get any number of other ways. You can earn more in the same amount of time if you get a PC, but credits are so easy to come by that it hardly matters.
I'm just repeatedly stating the same things here, so I'm just going to stop at this point. I don't think we're ever going to come to any agreement.
CGs don't involve competition with other players? Really?
- Do you understand how the ranks work?
- Have you noticed nearby markets get drained? Who is draining them?
As stated by others repeatedly, P2W aspects can also exist in single player activities or games.
Credits in fast and huge quantities. This CG is fast and easy for gaining large credits.
- Billions can be easily gained for players to purchase a fleet carrier, or several years of maintenance for a fleet carrier.
- An extra Billion can be handy for purchasing/outfitting a 2nd Panther Clipper.
- Players such as myself took the opportunity to slurp up credits to offload to their alt cmdr(s). Pay for their Fleet Carrier and multiple years of maintenance.
- My alt was able to increase trade rank to Elite. Shinrarta Dehzra unlocked. Another benifit of a big trade CG.
When collecting billions of credits the percent increase offered by the Panther Clipper becomes significant. "It hardly matters?" -> do the math!!!
Also the number of trips the optimized SCO also makes it much more pleasant than T9 or Cutter.
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Really.
Yes, I understand how the ranks work, and I also understand that the ranks don't matter. Look, I already had several billion. I earned about 1.5 from this CG so far. That puts me in the top 25%, for which I'll earn about another 250 million, which is nice to have, but it's not particularly important at this stage. And if I dropped down a rank, I'd lose out on 50 million, which ... meh. Whatever. I really don't care very much where I end up ranking-wise.
All of which you can do in a Cutter or T-9 without paying real money.
Does it though? A rough bit of maths after looking at the numbers on Inara says that if I made 30 runs hauling titanium in my PC vs my Cutter, I'd make about 700 million more. Now, that's not nothing, but it's not a huge amount of money the way things pay these days.
Oh, definitely. But I don't think anyone was arguing about what it's like to fly.
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I think the argument here is that, yes, it was super easy to make credits and do cg's before paid ships. Yes, content was paywalled since horizons regularly so it's part of the game's dna. But some players think it's a skill to grind a boring repetitive mindless activity for hours on end and they deserve to be the richest or at least, to be the ones getting cg rewards. Nevermind that it doesn't matter how rich anyone is to anyone else.
The same people will complain about anything that threatens to take their skill away.
The same people will complain about anything that threatens to take their skill away.
This might be the case at the moment. But we were talking about how far they could go, and my statement was about potential future ARX options. With them, the ARX money could very well keep the lights on. At one point, selling the product will not cut it anymore, after all the market will be saturated, and a digital product will not rot like eggs or potatoes. At this point, the continuous ARX income should be there... or bust.
I, for one, welcome our new P2W overlords. Hail to the ARX.
