I agree that there is an imbalance that needs addressing, but only from the point of it being believable in the elite universe. For example, I did a mission yesterday asking for 20 tons of coffee, which made me about 100,000 profit. It was very straight forward, no interdictions, job done. I have no problem with that - I could have got attacked and lost it all. however, I look at similar missions for taking down a couple of pirates for 10k? Why would anyone living in the universe take this mission, unless it gives something else. It's not attractive enough. It's like if pulse lasers cost more than plasma accelerators would any one buy a pulse laser? I accept that the assassination mission is more fun, but I also want to believe in the world I'm in, that's part of what I makes elite the game it is - at least for me - and these aspects just remove some of that believability for me.
Imbalance of Progress in Elite Dangerous
- Thread starter Drakedge
- Start date
So because a 1984 game was limited in its scope (for whatever reason, I'm not trying to bash the original Elite) a followup needs to be limited as well?
Furthermore, if the game is indeed focused on "trading" then why is the trading part of the game so shallow and lacking in features?
Wings does not solve the issue, in fact, it makes it more apparent. People who haul while whatching Netflix with those anacondas will group up forming invincible groups.
The money you can get is "ok", if by "ok" you mean cobra/viper.
As for the laughable RL comparison, refer to my previous post. You are a glorified truck driver in the most simplified trucking simulator. So no, comparisons to real life professions that actually have to do stuff other than travel from point A to B are not valid.
So the truck drivers also buy the shipment and own the truck they're driving?
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Im new here, and i start to play game since 15th January 2015.- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -
Correct me if im wrong. In 1.2 bounty hunting on RES are enhanced?
Cheers!
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Nothing in the patch notes would indicate this, I think
It doesn't matter. You offer 3 career paths, you balance them. That's one of the biggest mistakes they did. Not to adapt the game to the new options.
And balance does not mean they earn equally. It means they have rewards equally. Big difference.
When traders can amass a fortune, then buy a huge combat ship and dominate the smaller ones, that isn't good. The folks who are focusing on combat need to be able to dominate this skill area and have some sort of perk system that compensates for the lack of funds.
To be fair to FD they have continued to improve all three careers regularly. And if you take an honest look back, you'll be hard pressed to argue that combat has gotten the least attention. They've added more to and improved combat way more than trading, which got a few fixes and improvements to the ui. Exploration got discovery firsts and some fixes.
Combat has had ai tweaks, new SSS and USS content, several tweaks to NPC ship setup design, two separate bounty reward buffs and one buff to bond rewards.
But it's not quite there yet.
I would like to see some missions rewarded with unique tech for ships, like in elite gold you got yaw boosters for doing a mission.
Perhaps once your rep with a high tech system is high enough you get offered a "black box" mission to smuggle goods and the reward could be a class 2 scan resistant cargo bay.
Or an assassinate mission rewards you with some prototype guns that overheat fast but fire antimatter.
Sometimes rewards don't have to be monetary for some "careers".
Even a mission to mine a few hundred tons of bauxite but the reward is the much discussed and contemplated mining tractor beam which takes a weapon slot and needs to be targetted like the KWS.
I think the OP has good intentions, do broaden the game there could be more than money at stake.
Even better don't tell folk, just slip them in and let people discover them.
Perhaps once your rep with a high tech system is high enough you get offered a "black box" mission to smuggle goods and the reward could be a class 2 scan resistant cargo bay.
Or an assassinate mission rewards you with some prototype guns that overheat fast but fire antimatter.
Sometimes rewards don't have to be monetary for some "careers".
Even a mission to mine a few hundred tons of bauxite but the reward is the much discussed and contemplated mining tractor beam which takes a weapon slot and needs to be targetted like the KWS.
I think the OP has good intentions, do broaden the game there could be more than money at stake.
Even better don't tell folk, just slip them in and let people discover them.
To be fair - the UK is pretty messed up when it comes to salaries.
For the longest time qualified engineers were getting paid less than train drivers and bus drivers. Plumbers, and mechanics call themselves engineers who don't have degrees- and if degreed engineers said anything about this the technicians and mechanics would get their spanners and breaker bars out and whine in a threatening way.I say this because since leaving the UK I have worked in Germany (where engineers are respected and the title is protected and where mechanics and technicians have a good work ethic) and the USA- where again engineers are respected and rewarded and again, the title is respected. Fortunately things are starting to change slowly for engineers in the UK.
Back to relevancy: Truck drivers in the USA- or 'independent owner operators' get or used to get paid about $100-150K depending on how well connected they were and how hard they worked. Now, with truckers being part of huge carrier companies and the associated overheads and silly 'Euro-like regulations' it is very much lower- may be $55K. Again- a far far cry from the UK- which again is weird and probably suffers from Euro-bureacracy rules or something.
I would imagine the Elite Dangerous universe be more like the old school US frontier however I still think that Bounty hunting- due to the danger level should be rewarded higher
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"In real life the truck drivers do not make net earnings of ten times more than miners on average."
They're not truck drivers though, they're effectively merchants or traders, more like we saw in the days of the East India Company and the like. A trading ship coming back to England from the Far East (rares trading!?..) made the equivalent of millions and millions of pounds in todays money per trip.
Traders/merchant vessel captains own their ships, are responsible for all expenses, repairs, wages, cargo, and they still have to do the actual dangerous travelling despite being the boss.
Unfortunately it's not really a job that properly exists anymore, which is why I think people have a problem equating it to the real world. The closest we can imagine is a trucker, or a cargo ship captain maybe, whereas I think the spiritual successor to the merchants are more like commodities traders or the owners of huge haulage firms. And lets face it, these guys are in fact paid a hell of a lot more than ten times what a miner/bounty hunter/ explorer would earn. I wonder what the career earnings of Dog the Bounty hunter are compared to a guy who spent his life bringing back 50t of silk/saffron/tea at a time from China/India?
And as someone pointed out earlier, how many poor explorers are there out there, making the big bucks charting rainforests? Exploration has always been something done by people with enough money to have the free time to think "Hey, whats over there? Lets go and have a look, I may be some time darling!" Either that or they are pre-funded by Kings/Governments/private corporations and are further rewarded (or not) post-voyage when you return (or don't!) with some great discoveries (or not!)
In short, I think trading is exactly as OP as it is supposed to be! And yes it's also mind-scrambingly boring, tedious, piratey (esp. Lave etc). That's the trade-off for making a tuck-fon of money.
EDIT: the whole thing was in italics for some reason.
They're not truck drivers though, they're effectively merchants or traders, more like we saw in the days of the East India Company and the like. A trading ship coming back to England from the Far East (rares trading!?..) made the equivalent of millions and millions of pounds in todays money per trip.
Traders/merchant vessel captains own their ships, are responsible for all expenses, repairs, wages, cargo, and they still have to do the actual dangerous travelling despite being the boss.
Unfortunately it's not really a job that properly exists anymore, which is why I think people have a problem equating it to the real world. The closest we can imagine is a trucker, or a cargo ship captain maybe, whereas I think the spiritual successor to the merchants are more like commodities traders or the owners of huge haulage firms. And lets face it, these guys are in fact paid a hell of a lot more than ten times what a miner/bounty hunter/ explorer would earn. I wonder what the career earnings of Dog the Bounty hunter are compared to a guy who spent his life bringing back 50t of silk/saffron/tea at a time from China/India?
And as someone pointed out earlier, how many poor explorers are there out there, making the big bucks charting rainforests? Exploration has always been something done by people with enough money to have the free time to think "Hey, whats over there? Lets go and have a look, I may be some time darling!" Either that or they are pre-funded by Kings/Governments/private corporations and are further rewarded (or not) post-voyage when you return (or don't!) with some great discoveries (or not!)
In short, I think trading is exactly as OP as it is supposed to be! And yes it's also mind-scrambingly boring, tedious, piratey (esp. Lave etc). That's the trade-off for making a tuck-fon of money.
EDIT: the whole thing was in italics for some reason.
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Why is it that when the truck-driver analogy doesnt prove your point, you suddenly change it to a huge cargo shipping company, but still compare that to a single bounty hunter or miner? Doesnt it come to your mind that that your argument is not so strong after all? Or at least that real world comparisons are rubbish?
*cough*. --> Mining <-- *cough*
An easy enough short term fix is for FD to add pirate/trader/authority hunting missions on the bulletin boards for 100, 200, 500 kills instead of 5. Add a bonus on top of the normal payouts for killing that many ships. There's the scaling everyone is clamoring for. Then we'll see if that's what they really wanted all along, or if the whining continues and they still cry that they can't afford the giant TRADING vessels and they feel they should get paid just as much as the pure money making profession. In that case all further arguments and opinions from that combat-only-I-refuse-to-trade-even-for-10-minutes crowd should be ignored.
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and definitely mining. Exotic isotopes are needed. Perhaps in limited quantities and found in extraction sites around black holes. Yeah.
I don't think you understand scaling or progression.
No, everything needs to be as grindy, mindnumbingly boring and mundane as possible, otherwise it's not an Elite game.
Or that's what people on these forums seem to advocate.
EDIT: But, since only "whining" without contributing is not something I like, here's how I'd do it:
Re-do the missions. Add more variety, along with faction ranks unlocking more. Specific hard missions reward weapons/combat specific ships/upgrades. FD only needs to take a look at MMOs for the tried and tested "quest" recipe. Before you start crying about immersion/realism/yadda yadda, they can be adjusted for that rather well.
Loot dropped from NPCs/Players with bounties is no longer considered stolen, but something else. This way you can redeem it at (maybe) not the full price but a percentage.
Make interdictions harder to escape. Make combat harder to escape in general. This will increase the risk in "trading" by quite a bit.
Add NPCs much like the "buying gold" ones that sell illegal goods that can be sold for quite a bit of money but the fines if caught are massive. Smuggling is now a very valid profession.
Optional step, introduce an always online mode, where solo play save files can't be used.
In the end, I want to see "traders" having to hire combat escorts. Braben has said he wants players to be able to put bounties on other players' heads. Make it so. Organizations that can ally with the three factions. More player interaction. You can't give us content, give us some basic tools to make our own.
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And why wouldn't it work? If you get paid the normal payout + bounties + say 5 million bonus credits for blowing up 500 pirates is that not what some people are asking for? You'll get to do your favorite thing and get increased payouts with increased mission requirements, is that not scaling?
Oh I see you're one of those blowing up a harmless Eagle should pay 3 million credits types. You don't want scaling, you just want an EZ button.
Problem stems from trading not having rewards that are not credits. They earn the most and need the least, and that's the improper balancing that is the real issue. Their extra income needs to be exchanged for another type of reward, or tied up in a different activity.
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I honestly don't think FD anticipated how many traders want to do nothing but trade. It seems to me they intended for players to spend their excess earnings from trading on doing other activities, which isn't happening, and that is where the extra income is piling up at. Too many players, including the bounty hunters, pirates, etc... are one trick ponies that don't want to play any other way than that specific profession, which increases the disparity between them.
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I honestly don't think FD anticipated how many traders want to do nothing but trade. It seems to me they intended for players to spend their excess earnings from trading on doing other activities, which isn't happening, and that is where the extra income is piling up at. Too many players, including the bounty hunters, pirates, etc... are one trick ponies that don't want to play any other way than that specific profession, which increases the disparity between them.