Players losing it all and quitting - sure, their fault but not good for the game.

[QziQza]

I think to many people want "babying" the ED team have laid down a challenge, its up to us the players to rise to it.

Indeed,

After all, we all start out the same in Elite Dangerous, we all have to learn as we go. Some of us may have had the sense to do a little research, maybe looked up a few player written guides on the forums, common sense kind of stuff. Although most of us probably just jumped right in, learnt some small lessons, swore a lot, but just took it on the chin and got bag in the fight. I just really wish more people could do the same thing. Just take responsibility for your own mistakes and lack of knowledge, you know, learn from it and just get on. But no, its all finger pointing, excuses and blaming others.. only thing missing is crayon doodles and finger painting.

 

[Ghostickles]

I think to many people want "babying" the ED team have laid down a challenge, its up to us the players to rise to it.

meh, challenge, unless its PvP there is no challenge, not that I have seen yet. Human error isn't challenge. Hiding game mechanics and trolling people who did not know isn't a challenge. Its obtuse. Put insurance information in the tutorials, ez-pz.
I have no sympathy for those that flew knowing the risk, but you may not be aware that some others don't know about insurance or the loan until its time to re-buy.

 

[CmdrSimonsen]

I wonder how long it would take a dev to make this:

'a warning message', default for existing players is off, default for new players is on.

Personally I'd want a message in nice, friendly letters saying "You're not insured. Don't panic'

 

[flynnmichael81]

Going back to the original point of people quitting: I honestly believe that most of them will be back in a month or so. Its just rage making them quit but when they see the new sips or features they will be gagging to get back in the cockpit.

 

[Ghostickles]

I wonder how long it would take a dev to make this:

'a warning message', default for existing players is off, default for new players is on.

Personally I'd want a message in nice, friendly letters saying "You're not insured. Don't panic'

I wouldn't even do this, as nice as it is, I'd simply put a 'please note your insurance rebuy cost on the whatever screen, this is your cost to rebuy your ship if destroyed' message in the tutorial and be done with it.
If they don't do tutorials then they learn the hard way, fair enough, they wanted to learn the hard way, and they get what they want.

 

[CharlesD]

When it happened to me I was right back in grinding to get back where I was as fast as I could.

 

[-SOVEREIGN-]

[...], but you may not be aware that some others don't know about insurance or the loan until its time to re-buy.

Elite Manual 1.0, page 103 "Insurance Fees":

"If you have no ships and not enough credits to even pay the bounty or fine you owe at the
starport or outpost you arrive at after your ship has been destroyed, you are declared bankrupt.
All debt and crimes are cleared and you are transported to your starting location where you
receive a new loaned starting ship.
Effectively, your career is reset, but note that you retain all reputation and rank gained/lost (to
clear your career completely you will need to clear your save from the main menu)."

But if you prefer learning by doing (and fail at that, because comparing current credits to rebuy costs should be manageable for everyone favouring this approach) then this exactly will happen. You die, have no insurance and lose everything. I could live with a message because I don't fly without insurance anyway and wouldn't care, on the other hand I'm sometimes impressed how somebody could not know about insurance systems at all (has this guy NEVER seen the rebuy cost column?) and reached a level where he isn't covered by the 200k loan, which in fact IS the newbie protection net.

 

[paxx]

40+ pages of discussion when the matter really is terribly simple.

Assuming players quit because of going bankrupt...:

Either it's a good thing (for the game, for the longevity of the game, for FD (financially), for FDs future plans for ED etc.. good in a wide sense) that players quit or it's not. If it's a good thing then things should remain how they are, if not they should be changed. End of story. And I am sure FD will change things if they conclude it's bad (wide sense) for the game.

All the different arguments (from either side) "people should know", "I take responsibility", "it's in the manual", "consequences are too harsh" etc doesn't change the above.

Personally, I would probably not restart if I went bankrupt.

 

[wattyka]

It's a Multi-Player problem. If this game was offline then there would be game saves. A player could then reload their last saved game and only lose a little versus a lot. One could also have multiple game saves with a different ship/career for each. With the online multi-player edition game saves and many more aspects of the Elite games will never be realized. Just fire up an old copy of Frontier: First Encounters (FE2) to see all that is missing.

So true. I made the mistake of expecting something like FFE from the game (minus atmos flight/planets, I knew that). And I made the mistake to buy it from the first reviews and impressions online, which were great. But it quickly turned out: The engine is so good but has so little content. FD made a really good job in implementing a minimalistic something everywhere that is sufficient for the first few hours so you'd get the impression there is more of that to experience. Its not there though.

Missions and rank progression have an embarrassing little variety compared to FFE. Remember the camera/spionage or bombing run missions ? Remember waiting at the station exit for the ship with the right registration number to assassinate it before it jumps (so you don't have to chase him through systems, which you perfectly could) ? Remember reading the newspapers with actual story lines while autopilot did the boring work of "supercruising" ?

 

[Rockstep]

Personally, I would probably not restart if I went bankrupt.

My risk management strategy does not even allow the possibilty of going bankrupt.

 

[paxx]

My risk management strategy does not even allow the possibilty of going bankrupt.

Me neither.. I sort of get attached to my ships so I have old ones lying about the galaxy. Not the most effective way to play, but what the heck.... But if I did I doubt I would restart.

 

[Daffan]

The game won't be ruined because a few dozen players rage quit because they didn't set aside insurance money.

The community is big enough that even if 3,000 players do so it would only lose under 1% of the player base.

The game will be either be a success for many other reasons or a total failure down the road for many other different reasons still.

From an income point of view this is not a subscription based game, so people quitting after buying the product do not even impact the bottom line.

Arguably they have contributed equally to the bottom line and success of the game as players who stick around yet place 0 stress on the servers so by quitting the impact they have is to marginally improve the game experience for others...

Does it even matter? Open play metgame and population is already non-existant / dwindling . It's quite R.I.P

This is an MMO anyway, so every player counts. ESpicially when people are pushed away from open due to the bad base design (not even talking about insurance purely anymore)

 

[zzzornbringer]

if they can't do the math, it's their fault. simple as that. if they're crybabies about it and leave, well, that's actually good for the game. believe it or not.

 

[Beans]

I personally think the problem is "people" rather than the game, for each person expecting to be nannied through each and every part of the game there are others who find the lack of molly-coddling to be refreshing and one of the main reasons they enjoy it so much. Instead warnings popping up everywhere FDev have created a manual:

pp103 "If you have no ships and not enough credits to even pay the bounty or fine you owe at the starport or outpost you arrive at after your ship has been destroyed, you are declared bankrupt. All debt and crimes are cleared and you are transported to your starting location where you receive a new loaned starting ship."

I suspect that the number of players trying to blame the game for their mistakes are a very small minority and that they are eclipsed by the number who also make this mistake but keep quiet and carry on, having learned their lesson. Sorry to those who have been stung, but this is a sim not an Ubisoft "cinematic experience".

 

[slipfeed]

Yeah, the "instant gratification horde" is alive and well. ED is not that, nor should it be. If the game is anywhere near the way you describe it, losing ships has nothing to do with your issue. but again, if you work so hard "grinding" but chose to not insure your ships, that's a real head-scratcher. They deserve to lose their ships, because apparently, they didn't value the effort and work it took to get it in the first place.

Go play checkers, it's very engaging and you get instant gratification on nearly every move.

I think you're confused. There is a difference between a thing that is not instantly gratifying and a thing that is not gratifying at all.

There is no tool that is created without purpose. No effort that is expended by the sane, that does not lead to some gratification.

The simple act of expending effort is not reward. Effort must be expended in order to achieve a goal.

In life, the spending of that effort is generally unpleasant. Like all things in life this is no absolute rule, but rather an unfortunate probability.

In movies, video games, books, comics, or any other type of entertainment media, this cannot be the case.

Not only do we require a purpose or goal toward witch we leverage the tools we toil to obtain, but also for that process to be less toil and more entertainment.

This is not the concept of instant gratification. It is the most basic rule of entertainment. Slow or fast, positive or negative, the gratification must come, and the road must be an engaging experience.

 

[Spacey25]

The game won't be ruined because a few dozen players rage quit because they didn't set aside insurance money.

The community is big enough that even if 3,000 players do so it would only lose under 1% of the player base.

The game will be either be a success for many other reasons or a total failure down the road for many other different reasons still.

From an income point of view this is not a subscription based game, so people quitting after buying the product do not even impact the bottom line.

Arguably they have contributed equally to the bottom line and success of the game as players who stick around yet place 0 stress on the servers so by quitting the impact they have is to marginally improve the game experience for others...

I dont think the game will suffer much either. People needs to understand that they need to have rebuy cost on hand in case they decide to risk it a bit. Im am just wondering, where are you getting all these numbers from? Also, do you have any idea of the power of influence? The power that one has to influence others into a negative attitude towards the game? Is this type of attitude or better word "ego" that has brought down empires my friend.

 

[anikaiful]

Im am just wondering, where are you getting all these numbers from?

3000 and 1%? It's old news that E|D's sold 300,000+ copies.

 

[Spacey25]

3000 and 1%? It's old news that E|D's sold 300,000+ copies.

No, No, No, Im wondering how does he/she know exactly that this is the amount of players quitting? Ok the game sold that many copies but I cant seem to understand how he/she seems to know the exact number of players leaving. Its just quite fantastic.

 

[anikaiful]

No, No, No, Im wondering how does he/she know exactly that this is the amount of players quitting? Ok the game sold that many copies but I cant seem to understand how he/she seems to know the exact number of players leaving. Its just quite fantastic.

Oh that number ... to me that number seemed just hypothetical "what if" situation, not so much factual.

 

[PLF]

Hi folks,

Over and over again we see players in the facebook group and here coming on to say that for whatever reason they we operating without the rebuy funds, something happened and whammo... back to square one. Most seem to quit thereafter.

Now it's very easy to take the lofy moral ground and say that it's their fault for taking the risk they did. But the long and short of it is, it's not good for the game. This game is designed for humans and we have to consider how they are, not how they should be.

You could just ignore this issue and be high minded about it, but I believe the game will suffer.

Amazingly, I have even seen posts where people claim not to have known they could lose everything, although I find that hard to comprehend. People can be caught out too... for example a new module is bought and the calculations fail to take the increase in rebuy cost into account and the player is shy of the rebuy cost without realising it.

Personally, I never fly without the rebuy cost. I don't even risk my trading capital (mostly, have risked it a few times). You just need one-glitch when docking... a bump in the slit... whatever... and it's all over.

Are there plans to do anything about it? I'm not suggesting we dumb the game down, but perhaps there are simple things that could be done without removing the risk management aspect of things.

For example, you could have a system of accounts and you could move credits between them... for example, to put your rebuy cost aside.

Or, a simple message when your funds would drop below the rebuy cost after a transaction.

Or, your insurance excess is zero but you pay a premium. Or let the player decide the risk by having a premium that is related to the insurance excess.

Thoughts?

The game doesn't suffer if no one plays it, only if no one buys it, it is a device for a corporation to make money, if it sells, it worked, why care if no one plays?