Newcomer / Intro making money is brutal, how do I speed up the process?

[asdfblah]

I played for a few hours when the game came out, got sick of the hopeless grind and havent logged in since. Now that the game has been out for awhile what is the best way to make money at the start of the game?

I think I spent like 6 hours in the game and have basically no money, I accidentally shot a space station and ended up losing like 3 hours of work to stupid insurance and fines. At this rate it will take me 100 hours of grinding just to get a better ship.

 

[krysohmyz]

And that's actually exactly the idea. This isn't a game you could finish in 50 hours (or, well, finish it at all) with the best ship and tons of money.
I spent about 500 hours in this game since it came out. I didn't do any trading grinds and other stuff that bores the hell out of me, and I'm doing fine, now. But start is hard.
Unfortunately, you will HAVE TO spend those few (dozens) of starting hours making your living, getting your bearings... Then at one moment it will all come together and you'll start to be good at things. Or you don't, that's sadly another possibility.

 

[Dirkki]

They have increased the income on all professions so now is a good time jumping in again. You get credits much faster.

 

[Dark Skies]

It may be better not to speed up your progress but to slow down your expectations
Take time to enjoy the journey.

 

[Evyl Minkey]

I played for a few hours when the game came out, got sick of the hopeless grind and havent logged in since. Now that the game has been out for awhile what is the best way to make money at the start of the game?

I think I spent like 6 hours in the game and have basically no money, I accidentally shot a space station and ended up losing like 3 hours of work to stupid insurance and fines. At this rate it will take me 100 hours of grinding just to get a better ship.

This is no longer the case. Just log in and they throw cash and achievements at you now.

 

[cmdr lowest]

The larger question is... why do you feel compelled to have an big expensive ship tomorrow?

The lower tier ships, Eagles, Haulers, Adders, Cobras can do everything the game has to offer be it mining, exploration, bounty hunting etc. The only real problem is trading - if you're into that you get a Cobra and save up for a T6.

Look at the game as something you will play for years, rather than weeks. That's how its designed in my opinion.

 

[Evyl Minkey]

Lowest - Do you still feel this is the case, even with the recent changes? The game seems to be moving towards those who favour quick progression before moving onto the latest release. I hope you are right but I'm starting to have my doubts.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Lowest - Do you still feel this is the case, even with the recent changes? The game seems to be moving towards those who favour quick progression before moving onto the latest release. I hope you are right but I'm starting to have my doubts.

Xbox. Xbox (because my message was too short). Xbox.

 

[Kuroshio]

Eh, come on - roughly doubling the non-trade progression speed won't turn it into an instant gratification game. And the playground is big enough that it won't affect the hardcore elitists (that's us, I'm afraid...). I needed four weeks to go from Cobra to Asp, if new arrivals can manage it in two, I'm fine with it.

Besides, we always tell people that ship size doesn't really matter, so it shouldn't really matter if you get them slightly faster. The 'Verse is vast, there's enough room for a playground.

And we got a lot of small and sensible changes as well. A little more appeal to more players means FD has more money to take care of the serious stuff, too.

 

[Northius]

I played for a few hours when the game came out, got sick of the hopeless grind and havent logged in since. Now that the game has been out for awhile what is the best way to make money at the start of the game?

I think I spent like 6 hours in the game and have basically no money, I accidentally shot a space station and ended up losing like 3 hours of work to stupid insurance and fines. At this rate it will take me 100 hours of grinding just to get a better ship.

Expects a new ship within a few hours, negligent discharge of weapons at a station and also expects no punishment.

Im expecting alot more of these when Elite is released to the consoles, or should we the current players be expecting the furthered dumbing down of Elite to appease the impatient masses

 

[Sapient6]

Lowest - Do you still feel this is the case, even with the recent changes? The game seems to be moving towards those who favour quick progression before moving onto the latest release. I hope you are right but I'm starting to have my doubts.

I disagree.

"Progression" is a silly MMO term. It stems from the idea that the game should make you grind (do something for days upon days that you don't enjoy) and thereby "Earn" your reward. There is no greater sin an MMO company can commit than to provide fun gameplay to players who have not Earned them via a Grind.

That's what I see when people use it. As far as I can tell this complaint means "I spent months doing something unfun to earn my reward, and now someone can have fun playing the parts of the game that they want and then get a Vulture without ever grinding! THIS IS HORRIBLE!"

No, it's good.

It is good game design.

Non trading professions now earn enough money to be viable without trading, although they still don't make what a trader can make. There is now a heavy fighter available at a price point that represents a significant, but not huge, time investment for a non-trader. Traders can get to that heavy fighter really quick, sure, but it won't help them up their trading.

Want to get to the Vulture right quick with rares trading? Yeah, you can. But so what? If you never want to trade at all in this game, you can get to the Vulture but it will take you a decent amount of time without being outright punishing the way the OP describes his initial experience.

Chances are if the OP comes back he will still be frustrated if he continues to be reckless. Opening fire on space stations will still wreck his day, so he'll either get with the program or he'll get frustrated and leave. What he won't have to do if he doesn't want to is Trade. That doesn't mean the game is EASY MODE XBOX!!11111!!11, it just means it isn't catering to YOUR EGO.

And frankly your ego doesn't need to be catered to. You're doing that all on your own right here in this thread.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Maybe the thing that really needs to go now is rares trading.

That has always been one hell of a broken bit of design.

 

[Evyl Minkey]

Eh, come on - roughly doubling the non-trade progression speed won't turn it into an instant gratification game. And the playground is big enough that it won't affect the hardcore elitists (that's us, I'm afraid...). I needed four weeks to go from Cobra to Asp, if new arrivals can manage it in two, I'm fine with it.

Besides, we always tell people that ship size doesn't really matter, so it shouldn't really matter if you get them slightly faster. The 'Verse is vast, there's enough room for a playground.

And we got a lot of small and sensible changes as well. A little more appeal to more players means FD has more money to take care of the serious stuff, too.

I fully accept all of that and agree generaly. I'm just a little concerned with the overall direction. For now I'vewandered off in to space to give the latest changes time to bed in. I was genuinely interested in CMDR Lowest thoughts because like you he usually talks some sense.

Sapient6, sorry I haven't read all of your post due to the references to grinding or forcing others to do boring stuff. I don't grind, I play the game, sometimes I buy and sell commodities, sometimes I bounty hunt, do missions or explore. I've also tried smuggling and mining. I have yet to be bored by it. As I said above I'm not sure I like where the game is heading, if it is going where I think it is. I have some strategies to mitigate the impact on me if I need to. I'd just be happier if the game doesn't force me into that.

 

[asdfblah]

The larger question is... why do you feel compelled to have an big expensive ship tomorrow?

The lower tier ships, Eagles, Haulers, Adders, Cobras can do everything the game has to offer be it mining, exploration, bounty hunting etc. The only real problem is trading - if you're into that you get a Cobra and save up for a T6.

Look at the game as something you will play for years, rather than weeks. That's how its designed in my opinion.

Im not expecting a big expensive ship, I just expect to be able to get out of the starter ship in a timely manner. I have no where near enough money to upgrade to the next crappy ship after several hours of doing nothing but trade grinding. I have an Eagle but I dont dare take a bounty contract because the insurance would bankrupt me after one screw up, I was wanting to build up enough funds before I consider bounties.

 

[Universal Evil]

Im not expecting a big expensive ship, I just expect to be able to get out of the starter ship in a timely manner. I have no where near enough money to upgrade to the next crappy ship after several hours of doing nothing but trade grinding. I have an Eagle but I dont dare take a bounty contract because the insurance would bankrupt me after one screw up, I was wanting to build up enough funds before I consider bounties.

You shouldn't be taking on bounty mission(from the bullitin board) in your eagle but stick to "casual" bounty hunting at the local Nav-point or even better a nearby RES... You just go to one of those places and scan every ship in the area and if you see one that is "wanted" start killing them and you'll get you credits fast enough... Just don't take on conda's alone maybe try to team up in those new awesome wings, they are really good just did it myself with to other guys yesterday for like 4 hours and we made each around 1,2 mio credits and later on we even did a little piracy just for fun... sure it cost a little credit to pay off fines but once you have +10 mio credit you dont care as much about fines... it's more importen to have fun

 

[the100thmonkey]

That doesn't mean the game is EASY MODE XBOX!!11111!!11

I'm not going to address the rest of your post, because frankly it's difficult to tell who you're having a pop at, and angry rants are rarely worth responding to other than to say: Calm down. Screaming like a baby wins you few friends.

However, as I'm the one who mentioned the Xbox, I'll respond to that.

Have you been to a RES since the updates? Yes, it's great that I can make 1mcr/hr bounty-hunting in them. Seriously. I'm on record on this forum stating that I like the changes in how you can earn money so you don't have to grind trading (although for me it's not a grind; it's fun and enjoyable in an entirely different way. It's very rewarding to find and exploit a trade route that pays well, without going to Lave/Fujin/Witchhaul and doing rares. I too dislike that mechanic immensely - it's strongly artificial and is really only there as a honeypot so the PvP pirate crowd can have hollow-square T6s to shoot at and pretend it's somehow edgy to shoot a shoe box that has spitball launchers to fight with.)

The reason I said "Xbox" was due to the mechanic in the RESes now - it's pretty much constant shooting at targets that have no business being in the pirate trade. How do you get a Python and an 80,000cr bounty if you run without shields? Where do these pirate clans get all those Clippers from? And there's so much shooting going on that any miner in their right mind would do the frank and scrape metals out of rocks somewhere else. RES work is now (comparatively) very fast-paced and just difficult to believe. It's bounty after bounty after bounty. Yes, increasing the money one can make from bounty-hunting is a good idea, but the sheer numbers of pirates just defies logic, and seems to me to be a stab at fulfilling the "action-packed" sales pitch in the most recent media materials. The problem is that it's pretty half-hearted. Perhaps the machanic could have fewer but more challenging ships with bigger payouts for experienced combat pilots; perhaps have the instance spawn ships in some kind of relationship to the combat rank of the pilot. Perhaps have more smaller ships spawning for lower ranks with the occasional big snake that the sysauth vessels all pile into and the lower-ranked pilots can join in. Perhaps the devs could make the RES spawns have a clearer relationship to the security sate of the system, the wealth and the influence of the pirate faction.

There are more elegant solutions than just turning it up to 11. If there's one thing I'd say about the experience of Elite, it's that "elegant" is an adjective I've always used about the game, ever since 1984.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Im not expecting a big expensive ship, I just expect to be able to get out of the starter ship in a timely manner. I have no where near enough money to upgrade to the next crappy ship after several hours of doing nothing but trade grinding. I have an Eagle but I dont dare take a bounty contract because the insurance would bankrupt me after one screw up, I was wanting to build up enough funds before I consider bounties.

The next ship up from the Eagle in combat/bounty-hunting is the Viper, and believe me: it's far from crappy. I've only just sold mine after nearly three months of daily play. It's a brilliant machine that you will keep for a long time.

 

[Nethnerve]

Trading, trading always make money fast.

 

[kilvenny]

Been bounty hunting in a Sidewinder for a while, upgraded the power and shields, grabbed a kill warrant scanner and she's quite a nifty little ship. Replaced the canopy a few times, but generally pretty good as long as I play the percentages.