may i ask where exactly did you get these numbers? you seem sure that these numbers are accurate.
Frontier literally have no idea how to balance roles (not hyperbole, evidence inside)
- Thread starter Alexander the Grape
- Start date
I'm really confused as to what drives the changes that they make and then unmake in a continuous cycle. For example, they increased Fortification and Expansion costs by 5x in this PP cycle. For Archon expansions, it is basically impossible. We have to kill 10s of thousands of ships in order to expand. To stop us the other powers have to kill 15x fewer than that. I'm basically done with PP because of this issue. Now, like this poster, I have to ask, isn't this easily predictable? Can't you just look at how hard it was to do the expansions before and extrapolate? Instead they claimed that it might go up further. Perhaps that is because some of the powers expand easily, like Aisling Duval, as it is based on trading. With rating 5, you basically get enough credits to farm 5k merits right off the bat in 10/12 solo trips in a T-9/Conda, 3 hours worth of work.
On the pirating front, NPC trading ships don't have any goods. Why is this? How is that realistic that a T-9 is carrying 20-30t of hydrogen? Oh right, it doesn't matter as they can only drop 20t at a time anyway.
Why is trading completely predictable yet bounty hunting has a high dynamic range random number generator? They could set them up to depend on local conditions and meter out a specific calculated amount of credits based on that with a large variety of ships and pilot ranks.
Why does a giant asteroid only release a dozen chips of ore? Maybe they could just come out slower over time. All this stuff seems like non-sense and they need to rebalance the game from first principles so the roles make sense.
So what are the things that they are encouraging me to do: 1) Credit farming. Trade Conda (in open for variety), 4k+/t 1 jump route. 2) Merit farming by opposing military powers (15 merits/kill). 3) PvP & Pirating: actual fun. Why are two of things that I do farming? Why can't I just do 3) and get a reasonable number of credits and merits? Do they want me to trade?
On the pirating front, NPC trading ships don't have any goods. Why is this? How is that realistic that a T-9 is carrying 20-30t of hydrogen? Oh right, it doesn't matter as they can only drop 20t at a time anyway.
Why is trading completely predictable yet bounty hunting has a high dynamic range random number generator? They could set them up to depend on local conditions and meter out a specific calculated amount of credits based on that with a large variety of ships and pilot ranks.
Why does a giant asteroid only release a dozen chips of ore? Maybe they could just come out slower over time. All this stuff seems like non-sense and they need to rebalance the game from first principles so the roles make sense.
So what are the things that they are encouraging me to do: 1) Credit farming. Trade Conda (in open for variety), 4k+/t 1 jump route. 2) Merit farming by opposing military powers (15 merits/kill). 3) PvP & Pirating: actual fun. Why are two of things that I do farming? Why can't I just do 3) and get a reasonable number of credits and merits? Do they want me to trade?
Because the initial posting is right.
FD did an outstanding job with the game itself, graphics, atmosphere, look&feel of combats. But in terms of balancing roles they fail COMPLETELY. It's amazing how a brilliant framework like ED can feel so misbalanced and unfinished just because there's a lack in MICROBALANCING the values. Priorities in the development process seem to be upside down...instead of forcing the fundamentals to their right position by balancing the earnings in the game (and nearly every non-trader experiences the values to be wrong), FD just implements new features which generate MORE misbalance, because there is something wrong in the core game mechanics.
The initial posting is d4mn right. The game needs to be balanced for the pure FREEDOM everyone expects of it. I would *LOVE* to try piracy. I would *LOVE* to do mining. I would *LOVE* to hunt enemy ships in my own system...but this ends up in NO merits at ALL and 400 CR payment...so, what's the "freedom" all about? Trade for money to get ships. Trade PP articles to make your power grow. But don't even THINK about killing enemies for merits...you will spend 2 hours for the same result as a boring delivery of PP articles to the neighbor star in 5 minutes. So, this is not only about earning itself. It starts to infect powerplay.
Balance is what this game NEEDS. Urgently. Because the lack of balance FORCES players to ignore their own, individual joyment of personalized progression. All of this, because FD acts like "yeah, we put one merit for each kill and LATER we can change it depending on the whining"-strategy. One word for that: unprofessionality.
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Deleted member 94277
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My only problem with ED lack of balance is that the game too much about farming. If I'm a bounty hunter and want to fully deck a Python, I need to farm a lot of bounties. If I want to fully deck an Annie, it will take forever. By trading, however, I can do it much faster. So, I'll farm little missions, get a BH rig, farm bounties until I can afford a decent trading rig, farm trade routes to the millions up and until I can equip said Annie. Farm, farm, farm, just so I can farm some more. After I have my Annie, then... what? What will I do? I could just kit a Vulture, be a lone wolf type of BH... but then again, to do what?
This game lacks focus. Depth. And the fact that people obsess about balance is a symptom of a much larger problem.
This game lacks focus. Depth. And the fact that people obsess about balance is a symptom of a much larger problem.
This is exactly my point man, +1
The only true long term motivator right now is credits. What should be the case is credits as a means to access more advanced or mid to late game content unable to be completed at an earlier stage. Not just, as it is now, credits for bigger ships that may or may not make something attainable already, slightly less difficult. The game lacks focus and depth, as you rightly said.
I also strongly share the opinion that peoples current focus on credits and obsession with balancing income across professions is because there's nothing else of perceived value in game right now. Credits IS the end game; not to mention the early and mid game. So people obsess over it as they attempt to mentally fill the void where other, meaningful gameplay mechanics should fill.
Credits isn't and should never be the central gameplay mechanic. That it is only highlights a big problem at the core of the game design in that it lacks meaningfully deep content and satisfactory long term motivators (other than acquiring more money). If there were things like spanning mission arcs, multiple tiers to factions, hand crafted narratives (and dare I say it, station ownership, an in game clan system e.t.c.) and so forth creating a sense of investment and progression, physical things for people to latch on to and invest in. Motivators: People would only care about credits as far as it is able to supply them with adequate equipment to further their avenues of character progression in terms of these meaningful gameplay elements. You know, these elements that don't actually exist in game at all yet.
That's the real problem. People are obsessing over credits, because there is nothing else to generate player motivation. Fix the rest of the game, add flesh to these bones, see how that alters things, and then worry about balancing credits if it turns out that it's still important after the fact.
Yeah, and going to a Combat zone is THE most dangerous occupation yet pays peanuts.
They can't even say the volume of combatants makes up for the lack of individual value, because the time it takes to kill a well armed and armoured hostile completely negates the benefit of having more to choose from.
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I think you are about right in this. They took the old Elite and made a copy. The old Elite was very much imbalanced. That time you accepted the games as those were, and there was no way to patch the game later, so Elite was what it was, with all the flaws. Probably that time people did not even understand those to be design mistakes.
~Everyone from my gaming community has left, because they do not want to trade and there is nothing to do, especially together. I read the forums and I see similar posts, and most people do not ever write anything to the forum, they just silently leave.
And you know, if trading would be the least profitable thing to do in Elite, I think that most would not even care. It is very old style minigame, far from modern trading games. It needs a lot of rethinking and reworking. Why to force people to either quit the game or play idiotic, over simplified, old style minigame?
No, it is not that you can do what ever you want, earn 121k/h and enjoy the game -> It is a mandatory part if you want to get bigger ships.
Today things are not like those were, and I will be were surprised if FD does not understand this, sooner or later. The questions are when and how many players leave before that.
Not sure I agree here. Braben explicitly stated during KS that no one role should be better than another. Many adjustments made seem to be the result of trial and error. Goes way back when trading was 1000 times better than bounty hunting for earning a living. 1 merit for killing a ship in a military strike zone? Ugh.
Stick with what you know best, throw in some Agile and voila, a testing framework to see what people want.
Got to agree with the bunch saying that income balancing across professions is irrelevant. What should matter is the weight of each action on the potential effect one is willing to achieve. At some higher level, like power play - trading, BH, etc. are supposed to be just tools in the sandbox, which exist so that a pilot can achieve one of the pre-determined goals. Trading in a group puts a system in a state of economic boom. As a result, say local government pays +400% on bounties, as they are willing to turn extra profits into more security in system and thus solidify minor faction's controlling stake in system. Trader refits into a bounty hunter and fulfils the demand for reduced criminality, which lasts, for, say, one day. What the meta-system could do, is create short opportunities of stellar profits/higher influence, temporarily unbalancing the system in favour of him, who is willing to put some effort into activating the effect. Taking it to the next level, one effect breeds the other, so another refit is in order and maybe a couple of changes in philosophy along the way.
When the game can't achieve anything beyond level one, people start to be concerned with "balancing" the roles. 1:1:1:1 is irrelevant, again, money shouldn't be the focus anyway, beyond having a ship of your dream, be it eagle or anaconda. It's the weight of the action towards the PP and BGS or within your own agenda that should matter. The second layer, the third, etc. Well, according to me that is.
When the game can't achieve anything beyond level one, people start to be concerned with "balancing" the roles. 1:1:1:1 is irrelevant, again, money shouldn't be the focus anyway, beyond having a ship of your dream, be it eagle or anaconda. It's the weight of the action towards the PP and BGS or within your own agenda that should matter. The second layer, the third, etc. Well, according to me that is.
The biggest fault with ED is that some people think that it should be balanced, and that FD have surrendered to them.
Different activities should have different rewards, and small lone ships should not be able to compete with larger ones.
That was indeed the dream, but it has instead morphed into an ordinary MMO.
Its not a bad game now, but all the magic has been sucked out.
Small ships should not be able to compete with larger ones. But as it is now a T-6 can make more money trading than say a Python can doing anything except trading.
Errr....what? Nonsense. There's no scaling or progression trough ships. Use which ship is best tool for a job.
Just about any game I have ever played has always had some form of trading as the top earner, with Missions a second and forms of combat, pick-up bits sell around a third. I don't understand why anything needs to be balanced. I certainly dispute 10 mill an hour as a normal trading income, it's more around 3-5 mill if you have the ship to do it. I make around 1.5 mill an hour in combat at either High Intensity CZ or at High intensity Res Zones. I tend to thread missions into those 2 occupations but I think if you did them exclusively as you progressed towards Elite status you could make in excess of 1 Mill an hour.
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Its kinda understandable that the developers don't actually play the game in their own time. Doubt I would if I spent all week working on it. Not sure where it leaves the point about them making a game they want to play. Because if they had actually played it in earnest we might have less stuff to grind and more fun things to do. Ultimately if we dont get what we want from the game its likely time to move on. There are other space sims coming to market soon. :/ The solo and private group mode really is bad for the game imo.
However, there was an extremely strong anti-pvp sentiment coming from Frontier at one point.
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