Patch To Kill Free Lance Bounty Hunting at Extraction Sites?

[Huntn]

I heard this nasty rumor that a near future patch will kill the steady stream of pirates spawning in the vicinity of Resource Extraction Sites. If it's true, this might kill the game for me. Can anyone confirm or deny?

I'm still a newb and before I discovered the fun of Free Lance BH (bounty hunting) at a RES (resource extraction site), outside of missions, I was not happy, was bored with running missions and trading, making peanuts in the process. In fact I was dispairing at how hard it was to make money in this game at the starting levels. That is before a friend pointed me at a RES and BH, going from making $2k in a trade or if lucky $10k for a mission, to makingup to $100k in about an hour of bounty hunting.

Yeah, I love money, but I want action too! Yes, if there were riches to be made, I'd consider and could withstand several, even multiple trading cycles, but this is BOR-RING, the primary draw is and remains dogfighting, combat, and finding a local where I could spend a couple of hours fighting. Take that away from me and all bets are off.

 

[Ari Ben Zayn]

We had endless supplies of goods fixed and we also have endlessly respawning pirates fixed. I'm sure the luxuries traders don't like that either (in fact they don't: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=109138 ).

 

[Hitsuke]

I agree that this is one of the most ridiculous things FD could have done. I mean, it's not like it was highly profitable anyway and it was very RNG dependent (One set of Anaconda spawns every 2 or 3 days if you were lucky) and it usually yielded 100-300k every hour... hardly life changing amounts.

This change is essentially going to make PvE bounty hunting worthless in terms of credit making, unless they decide to hugely increase bounties across the board. Which they won't. It just seems to me, like FD are nerfing every income making venture in order to slow down player progression... thinking that people will have to play longer to reach the new shineys. What it will in fact do is drive a lot of players away from the game, because the credit grind is absolutely abhorrent.

 

[jamuelscones]

Bounty hunting at RE sites has been my biggest pleasure in Elite so far. I really don't understand why this change has been made. What is the rationale for it? It can't be the money, since bounty hunting doesn't scale well at all. Is it to provide miners with an easier time?

 

[Doctor Axel]

It always did strike me as odd that there were so many random, individual, unorganized pirates around RES's even when security was present. I think nerfing might not be the right idea though - if it were up to me, I'd make pirates a more organized presence so that if they were outnumbered by security, they'd hang back - and if they saw an opportunity, they'd come in a larger, more organized group.

But that's kind of similar to the issues that pirates at USS's have - they don't give a doggone if you start shooting up one of their buddies. That seems like it shouldn't be so. Hopefully the Wings update will make NPC's act like they're in wings, too.

Anyway, yeah - nerf might be an easier patch, but not quite the right idea.

 

[Huntn]

We had endless supplies of goods fixed and we also have endlessly respawning pirates fixed. I'm sure the luxuries traders don't like that either (in fact they don't: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=109138 ).

As of last night spawning pirates were still there. The key to this games success is holding the interest of large numbers of players. While I'm sure some are tickled pink making their fortunes supplying luxuries, while droning back and forth through the blackness of space , I have to ask, what's the point? Look at Eve, would it exist if not for massive battles and turf wars? Imo combat and being able to find consistent combat is the draw that will make this game a success. With the Authorites waiting in the wings to slap you down, you've got to be hunting pirates for some fun.

 

[BaalMoloch]

Last night I tried this but instead of just staying in the ring I killed a couple pirates and jumped back into SC.
Then I would get back in or into a USS that popped near the ring. It was still enough to reach 100k credits in less than an hour so I am not that worried. The fighting can still be done even if the pirates don't respawn endlessly in one drop from SC into the ring.

The GOOD NEWS is related to the combat zones.

The combat zones will have different bonds to match the different ship sizes. That would make combat zones profitable and they are an endless supply of combat as well!!

 

[Alcovitch]

I agree that this is one of the most ridiculous things FD could have done. I mean, it's not like it was highly profitable anyway and it was very RNG dependent (One set of Anaconda spawns every 2 or 3 days if you were lucky) and it usually yielded 100-300k every hour... hardly life changing amounts.

This change is essentially going to make PvE bounty hunting worthless in terms of credit making, unless they decide to hugely increase bounties across the board. Which they won't. It just seems to me, like FD are nerfing every income making venture in order to slow down player progression... thinking that people will have to play longer to reach the new shineys. What it will in fact do is drive a lot of players away from the game, because the credit grind is absolutely abhorrent.

Completely agree with this. It seems to be their mission to make every avenue of profit gaining or profession in the game equally as crappy.

The Seeking Luxuries runs, while broken, where the only source of progression that wasn't ridiculously slow. Let it be clear, the SL farming was still a HUGE grind and really boring, but their solution to make me go look for a new route to farm every 30 mins to an hour with the really bad and useless trade tools in game is NOT a solution.

I guess they should rebrand this game to Elite: Tedious.

 

[Derath]

Luxuries were clearly broken, I don't entirely agree with them lowering BH income however I actually felt BH was the best placed for progression in terms of effort/reward, with mining, exploration and piracy too low and trading much too high.

Unfortunately, not acting swiftly to remove holes creates the idea that was the design path and its being nerfed, so people who probably would have been happy with 2mil/hr are now unhappy at 2mil/hr because they've had 10mil/hr

 

[salad]

It is indeed a nasty rumor, I posted this on another thread, but here we go again

People in the beta have been to RES and reported that nothing has changed.

I think the only changes they did to RES nodes was to prevent this: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=100979

No bounty hunt nerfs so far, it was a rumor started by misinformed users because they saw this in the patch notes:

- Prevent infinite stream of pirates in extraction zones

 

[Derath]

It is indeed a nasty rumor, I posted this on another thread, but here we go again




No bounty hunt nerfs so far, it was a rumor started by misinformed users because they saw this in the patch notes:

- Prevent infinite stream of pirates in extraction zones

I don't understand tbh sorry if i'm being stupid here but nerfing ring farming is a nerf to BH as it was the theoretical maximum currently, this lowers it back to anaconda extraction zones as the maximum instead which funnily enough removes the purpose of flying a bigger ship really as you can do a conda zone as fast in a viper as anything else lol.

 

[Huntn]

Last night I tried this but instead of just staying in the ring I killed a couple pirates and jumped back into SC.
Then I would get back in or into a USS that popped near the ring. It was still enough to reach 100k credits in less than an hour so I am not that worried. The fighting can still be done even if the pirates don't respawn endlessly in one drop from SC into the ring.

The GOOD NEWS is related to the combat zones.

The combat zones will have different bonds to match the different ship sizes. That would make combat zones profitable and they are an endless supply of combat as well!!

I am a newb... Combat or Conflict zones? I found this link: http://elitedangerous.gamepedia.com/Conflict_Zone. I could see this as the combat outlet and that it could be a better venue for combat, however for new players in starter zones, BH at RESs appears to be the most profitable means of cash generation early in the game and they are going to take hatt away?

Can anyone produce a list and location of Conflict Zones? Thanks!

 

[salad]

I don't understand tbh sorry if i'm being stupid here but nerfing ring farming is a nerf to BH as it was the theoretical maximum currently, this lowers it back to anaconda extraction zones as the maximum instead which funnily enough removes the purpose of flying a bigger ship really as you can do a conda zone as fast in a viper as anything else lol.

If you read that thread it wasn't about normal RES farming, it was about forcing only pirate spawns in a clear area near RES nodes, I don't think the game was supposted to be like that. The most important is that the normal RES bounty hunting has not been affected.

 

[Huntn]

It is indeed a nasty rumor, I posted this on another thread, but here we go again




No bounty hunt nerfs so far, it was a rumor started by misinformed users because they saw this in the patch notes:

- Prevent infinite stream of pirates in extraction zones

I apologize for starting the merry go round again. I was advised by someone who is much more advanced in the game that this was planned for a near future patch, "stopping the endless flow of pirates" which seems to match up well with the patch note, which kind of sounds like a nerf, does it not?

However I was at a RES last night and there seemed to be a decent supply of felons. So is the nefarious change that is supposed to happen, in fact happened or is it still in-work?

 

[dioogio]

It is borderline boring now.There are simply not enough spawnings(wanted) to keep me amused.
And when more than 1 Cmdr is in a zone its crap.

 

[Derath]

If you read that thread it wasn't about normal RES farming, it was about forcing only pirate spawns in a clear area near RES nodes, I don't think the game was supposted to be like that. The most important is that the normal RES bounty hunting has not been affected.

I know what it is I've done it extensively and contributed lots of data to the thread lol, but it really isn't any different to RES except you don't have police to help you out and the ships are more varied... lol

 

[Phier]

Fixing this is fine, BUT what they need to do is make bounty hunting missions more varied and worth while.

Getting 14k for a mission to kill X targets is horrible and boring. Added the anaconda missions are just boring and predictable.

Better missions (which is something that I hope gets done ASAP) would make a lot of the trade/hunting whines go away.

 

[Huntn]

It is borderline boring now.There are simply not enough spawnings(wanted) to keep me amused.
And when more than 1 Cmdr is in a zone its crap.

Hey, I lost 3 or 4 kills to Federal Authorities last night because they were out there prosecuting without me!

 

[Janichsan]

However I was at a RES last night and there seemed to be a decent supply of felons. So is the nefarious change that is supposed to happen, in fact happened or is it still in-work?

If you are playing the normal release version of the game (currently 1.0.7), that isn't implemented yet. That supposed fix only comes with version 1.1 (which is currently in beta).

 

[Huntn]

I know what it is I've done it extensively and contributed lots of data to the thread lol, but it really isn't any different to RES except you don't have police to help you out and the ships are more varied... lol

last night there were 3-4 Federal Authority ships patrolling in packs at my favorite RES.

Fixing this is fine, BUT what they need to do is make bounty hunting missions more varied and worth while.

Getting 14k for a mission to kill X targets is horrible and boring. Added the anaconda missions are just boring and predictable.

Better missions (which is something that I hope gets done ASAP) would make a lot of the trade/hunting whines go away.

My newbie impression is that missions for beginning players suck, not enough of them and miserly payoffs. Drop the price of a Cobra down to $75k Cr and starter mission rewards would seem much more reasonable.