I agree and disagree with some points. First I think that getting to the biggest vessel should not be the goal of the game. If someone thinks he needs an Anaconda to have fun, go on and grind, but don't expect the game to be designed around your playstyle. I want FDEV to enhance the overall experience and deliver a richer and deeper gameplay rather than balancing all professions so everyone can grind equally. Grinding should not be the top priority in game design.
You make some valid points, but your post lacks of suggestions. Critizising is easy as long as you don't come up with solutions.
- Bounty-hunting payoffs are highly random, and depending upon payoff, can be ridiculously easy (a 20k Sidewinder? SURE!) to impossibly difficult (Not one bite and the only one is a 50k Anaconda. Really?). Dont get me started on the inconsistent RES spawning too.
Killing an Anaconda is not impossibly difficult. Get better or run. But just as you I would like to see an overhaul on bounties. I don't have a problem with a 20k sidewinder (haven't seen one yet). Bounties should depend on ranks and ships. An Elite Eagle for example is significant harder to kill than a Novice Cobra, still you get more credits for the Cobra.
On RES: The current random spawning is not optimal. But making it "consistent" means for me making it static. This would be even worse.
- Combat zone payoffs, even with the latest update, are anemic and are barely worth the effort of undocking. For some combat pilots, you'd have to kill several tens of targets just to break even on the cost of fuel used to fly and stay there.
- Fighting outside of combat zones after a bounty with police all around on the same target is actually far more dangerous than taking on the target solo, because of the risk of friendly fire without forgiveness or warning. Dont give me the bull- reasoning of "you're not paying attention to your radar" malarkey. Not one single time I friendly-fired was it even remotely possible for me to even notice the police craft crossing my line of fire by trying to decipher his sig from everyone else's around me at the same time as dodging enemy fire, asteroids, collisions from other police and shooting at the target. Dont even get me started on the risk of police still being able to steal your kills.
On combat zones, see above. I would like to see higher bounties for Elite and Dangerous enemies. But if you have higher fuel costs than profits you are doing something wrong. Even before 1.1 I could easily go for 30.000 in combat bonds before I had to reload my weapons.
I don't have anything to say on FF and your other problems, it would lead to a meaningless discussion. We already have enough threads about it.
- The intial seed money of getting a combat-capable craft able to handle the only kill missions is expensive to newcomers. There are no kill missions for smaller craft or more inexperienced pilots, scaring all but the most masochistic to attempt to kill an Anaconda with a Sidewinder, even if it is possible (and lets be honest, having the only kill missions be Anacondas without warning other than the dubiously large payout is a bit of a move). Why are all the missions that have easier entrypoints to do at are courier and trade jobs only?
I agree, it would be nice to have some variation in assassinations. Still it should remain a profession for experts. You start as harmless, not as the guy from Assassins Creed. Courier and trade jobs aren't the only entry missions. I started with killing pirates.
- The initial seed money to get an exploration vessel is even more expensive. You're pretty much required to get the Advanced Discovery Scanner, the Detailed Surface Scanner, a fuel scoop and a ship that can travel the large distances on a single jump.
That is true for every profession in game. If you want to do trading you need a big ship with lots of cargo. If you want to do assassinations you need a strong ship with lots of weapons. This makes newcomers to do a bit of everything at start. You begin with a lousy sidewinder and 1000 credits. It's part of the game design and a good thing.
- The glaring lack of ship progression for combat pilots after the Viper. The Cobra is nowhere near capable enough for the hard combat jobs a Viper can do (like singlehandedly taking down Anaconda kill mission targets, of which they are the only available kill mission target thereis), and the price gap between the Viper and anything bigger than a Cobra is absurdly large, and the Asp isnt even worth flying as a combat-capable craft without at least double the hull cost invested into it.
You can kill an Anaconda in a Cobra just as easy as in a Viper. If you can't do it, don't blame the game for it. The Asp is not a dedicated fighter. If you want more combat ships the best thing you can do is wait for new ship releases. There will certainly be something that suits you.
- The insane difficulty of fitting a shield cell bank (of now questionable worth) onto a Viper thanks to the over-nerfing of it that didnt fix the biggest problem of the module in the first place. Now the module is basically worthless on anything but a combat ship because of its lethargic shield healing performance, and the fact you can still fit more than one per ship means that the original problem hasnt been fixed in the slightest, and just made it so that ships like the Eagle and Viper are left out in the cold as to even bother fitting one considering the increased power and munitions costs. It was a direct combat ship nerf when such a nerf wasnt even needed.
You can fit SCB on a Viper. You just need to understand how power management works. But I would like to see SCB restricted to one module per ship. They could be buffed a little in return.
And the most glaring problem many of us see:
- From a large range of people I've talked to who play Elite Dangerous of nearly all playstyles, a large majority of traders are the only ones who earn far more than explorers or combat pilots, and are also the only ones who seem to have had any shot at bigger ships with less playtime invested, with less effort invested, and arguably, with more safety than combat or exploration. The only risk a smart trader would have to face is the once-in-a-blue-moon mistake causes ship loss and thereby the loss of a full cargohold, making the cargohold lost cash. Compare that to combat and exploration pilots who suffer far more hull losses in general. Dont even get me started with the anemic payout in combat zones, the bull- risks one has to undetake when bounty hunting, the crashing and many other problems with trying to sell exploration data, the fact that exploration data dont even pay close to bounty-hunting...
See my first statement. I think traders should make the most money. Trading is about making money. Bounty Hunting is about killing things. That is fun and this fun is the reward. You don't need to make profits significantly better, FDEV needs to make it more interesting through better features. Same with exploration and mining. There is also no point in everyone flying an Anaconda, that would kill the game for me.
