Smuggling missions now pointless.
- Thread starter signal11th
- Start date
Thanks for that and I will add, a lot of people on here will see my posts as negative but I'm not trying to be even though they might appear so. This is the game I waited 30 years for. This was the one game I thought was going to recapture the sense of wonder and wow factor the same as the first time I loaded up Elite so many years ago. In a small part it's succeeded in that there is that wow factor for me. I was going to be a backer (until the wife found out) I couldn't wait, the sense of excitement I felt when I first opened the game up was unreal.
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Back in 84 the game was just the game, it was tough, it didn't compromise, it had plenty of faults and exploits but you didn't care you found something that paid well and shot lots died lots on way doing it but that was back in 84 times are different, people don't have the time you did when you were kids unless your a kid yourself. Everything's online now so things can be patched, new ideas and new formats brought in and community voices can be listened to but the downside to that is eventually the game tries to be all things the all people and that just doesn't work.
The game itself is great , Although I'm bored and tired of the constant interference that seemingly pervades it I still love the game, just the fact I can pick any point in space and get there eventually is something to be applauded and marvelled at. It's a truly beautiful game but when a game starts to become more like work to a lot of people than work itself there is a fault somewhere with it. I don't mind earning nothing doing cargo runs if i'm having fun doing it but picking up a canister and then dropping it off to another system for the 500th time and having exactly the same thing happen every time I do a run is neither fun or productive "but that's elite" you might say , well yes it was Elite back 30 years ago but the world has moved on, times have changed, what kept your interest and excitement 30 years ago just doesn't do it for you now, you know more, expect more , understand more , demand more.
I think eventually Frontier will deliver that but like me lots of people have really short patience thresholds and hopefully we can all just let the DEV's concentrate on this instead of wanting this/that or the other nerfed or buffed or changed or brought in. Anyway enough of my soapboxing.
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Except black markets pay less for illegal commodities than markets where the commodity is legal pay. Non BB smuggling is terribly implemented.
I so feel that!
After a week of on and off being called, play time disruptions, duty and mandatory chores you realise you made a whopping 112,000 credits. Only another +/- 2 months before you make another million!
I've made millions from buying legally and selling illegally... do you mean they pay less for stolen commodities, because that's true.
If you miss it because TLDR, here is the new absurdity.
This game is a personal game, people play on their way. Personally, i don't like "easy" aspects of the game, so i never ran after easy credits and i forbid anyone do it. None should get easy credits because i don't want them to do. Everyone should play this game like i do. This game is personal.
This game is a personal game, people play on their way. Personally, i don't like "easy" aspects of the game, so i never ran after easy credits and i forbid anyone do it. None should get easy credits because i don't want them to do. Everyone should play this game like i do. This game is personal.
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Frontier do listen to their community, that's why they took the decision to pretty much remove LRM. the problem is they didn't tackle it properly, they should of thought about the mission mechanic a lot more than just pretty much make them non existent.
Which is why they also said this is temporary and different changes will be made. This is just an emergency break on the thing till it works better. People here need to chill more and be happy.
Source?......
(EDIT - I mean that Frontier did it because of community say so and not of their own volition, not whether or not they were reduced)
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which is fair enough, but the mission system has been this broken since it arrived
something about turds and polishing springs to mind Well they probably did in a round about way because they probably wouldn't have known/realised about it until it was mentioned on the forums.
You really think that ?, or is this more scapegoat hunting?, Frontier have their own metrics and data, I'm sure they are quite capable of deciding if something needs changing or not without the 'permission' of what was it 5, 10, 15 posters on their forum.
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We're at 1.4 and their placeholder BB still looks like something designed for a basic game in the 80's. How can they keep getting it so wrong.
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I'm not so sure, they put the system in there in the first place. And when you say 'scapegoating'. Do you mean when something is poorly designed, programmed, implemented or changed, that we should hold someone other than the game developers responsible ? Global warming?
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I'm not so sure, they put the system in there in the first place. And when you say 'scapegoating'. Do you mean when something is poorly designed, programmed, implemented or changed, that we should hold someone other than the game developers responsible ? Global warming?
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Again you just doing the same as I am, Do you know 100% they do or are you assuming they do? Because personally I'd expect a software company to have a separate copy of the game running somewhere that all this gets tested on before it goes live but again I don't work for Frontier so I don't know for 100%
I work in a datacentre and we have a copy of everything on our system that runs in a virtual environment so if anything gets done it gets done in there first and then released onto the live servers after being checked. So either way Frontier didn't test it (anyone with half a brain could have told them what was going to happen with only the barest of information) or they did test it and released it anyway.
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Again I'm not, many posters have been saying as if it is gods own truth, 'oh the whiners got them removed, spoiled Elite for me', (though many of them weren't moaning pre Sothis, funny that), I have been saying all along that the more likely scenario is that Frontier looked at their data, didn't like what they saw so implemented a change. If we follow the line of reasoning that the 'whiners ruined it' posters are following, not only are the missions coming back but that will be as, (if not more), valuable than they were, they will as, if not more frequent, than they were and everyone will be billionaires a fortnight after, becuase you know, apparently moaning gets it done. So, where does that leave Frontier in terms of player retention over the 10 year development course of their game?, are Frontier hoping to have massively high turnover of players and a nice steady influx of totally new players over the life cycle? - The line of reasoning, or lack of is ridiculous, as I said, many of you want someone to blame, (for some reason).
Well the problem at the moment is that Smuggling missions are now so rare, that they're not worth waiting for. They might as well not exist, and legal cargo missions are boring as hell. Sothis was only so profitable because it was so far away. I think that was the whole point, the further you are from the central systems, the further you had to travel and the more valuable the mission. It was actually functioning as intended, but because it was one of few places that remote, people assumed it must be a bug.
Personally, my take on it is this: There's nothing wrong with filling your cargo hold with missions, taking illicit goods to far off destinations and getting paid handsomely for it. It's call "business".
What do you think a smuggler is going to do with a ship? Fill it with goods to smuggle and make as much profit as possible. And I'm talking REAL smugglers. Look em up, they do people drugs and weapons rather often. The payout most likely being a function of available cargo space, value of cargo, distance, difficulty/risk and of course, supply and demand. Do you think they leave port with spare cargo space? Do you think they ship legitimate cargo as well to fill that space? No and No. Although I'll concede that legitimate cargo might be used to camouflage illicit goods...
My point being, if that's what smuggling looks like on earth in the real world, then why the hell should it be any different smuggling goods through space in a virtual world that is set in the real world's theoretical future?
What I'd personally like to see is about 3x the number of missions. Just in general. But when it comes to smuggling missions, they need to be more varied and more plentiful. Cargo delivery missions both legal and smuggling, should interlock, one cluster of systems providing missions which take you to another cluster and so on, each cluster of stars should in fact take you to several (3-4) separate clusters, giving you the choice to work your way around a long range trading web. Maybe taking missions which increase in distance towards a specific cluster and planning your route accordingly. But most importantly, you should be able to do this without having to spend forever cherry picking the most profitable missions, in fact, you should be forced to carefully plan your missions to meet your cargo limitations/jump range/risk/reward/etc. You should be able to dock, load up/top off your cargo, refuel/repair/rearm and leave, all without checking the bulletin board every 5 mins and mode switching for hours.
Sure, the rewards need to be a function of risk/tonnage/value of commodity/distance/Reputation/rank, but there's nothing wrong with letting players make credits, if anything, having an easier time building your bankroll, means you can actually enjoy the other parts of the game because rather than grinding your chosen profession to the exclusion of all else, you have the freedom to use your profession to fund your extra curricular activities. Just. Like. Real. Life!
Personally, my take on it is this: There's nothing wrong with filling your cargo hold with missions, taking illicit goods to far off destinations and getting paid handsomely for it. It's call "business".
What do you think a smuggler is going to do with a ship? Fill it with goods to smuggle and make as much profit as possible. And I'm talking REAL smugglers. Look em up, they do people drugs and weapons rather often. The payout most likely being a function of available cargo space, value of cargo, distance, difficulty/risk and of course, supply and demand. Do you think they leave port with spare cargo space? Do you think they ship legitimate cargo as well to fill that space? No and No. Although I'll concede that legitimate cargo might be used to camouflage illicit goods...
My point being, if that's what smuggling looks like on earth in the real world, then why the hell should it be any different smuggling goods through space in a virtual world that is set in the real world's theoretical future?
What I'd personally like to see is about 3x the number of missions. Just in general. But when it comes to smuggling missions, they need to be more varied and more plentiful. Cargo delivery missions both legal and smuggling, should interlock, one cluster of systems providing missions which take you to another cluster and so on, each cluster of stars should in fact take you to several (3-4) separate clusters, giving you the choice to work your way around a long range trading web. Maybe taking missions which increase in distance towards a specific cluster and planning your route accordingly. But most importantly, you should be able to do this without having to spend forever cherry picking the most profitable missions, in fact, you should be forced to carefully plan your missions to meet your cargo limitations/jump range/risk/reward/etc. You should be able to dock, load up/top off your cargo, refuel/repair/rearm and leave, all without checking the bulletin board every 5 mins and mode switching for hours.
Sure, the rewards need to be a function of risk/tonnage/value of commodity/distance/Reputation/rank, but there's nothing wrong with letting players make credits, if anything, having an easier time building your bankroll, means you can actually enjoy the other parts of the game because rather than grinding your chosen profession to the exclusion of all else, you have the freedom to use your profession to fund your extra curricular activities. Just. Like. Real. Life!
Man if moaning made money I'd be a millionaire but I'm not so I have to agree with you. Personally I actually tend to agree with your reasoning on this basically because I would find it plainly ridiculous and unbelievable that a company wouldn't do it the way you suggested but stranger things do happen (well that's my caveat anyway).
I have moaned about it I admit but not for the reason they did it just the way it was handled, I was having fun and I hasten to add not actually making much money but to me it just seems that money trumps fun and it got killed too harshly instead of being balanced properly.
That we do agree on Signal, and to be frank, you've been one of the more reasoned posters on this debate, the way it has affected your non Sothis smuggling has been really unfair and I feel for you, I hope Frontier get it right when the missions have been worked on, for every ones sake.
I had just been playing in open for nearly eight hours and I was getting smuggling runs for 170k in the same system (station to station). So I don't think it's nerfed completely, just kicked down a notch. I was about to come on the forums and say Hallelujah my prayers are answered, because of them I could afford that Vulture which I will use to undermine enough to get that damned space python. Or a clipper because hey those are like a giant flying pair of ray-ban aviators. Or I could trade it in for an Asp for which to explore and find things like white holes and Dyson spheres, the best vacuums in the universe.
And why shouldn't a slave run net you 200k? It's so nice for me, who bought the game at launch, to be able to afford ships that my playing time would not allow for using the missions that previously were a joke. 8k there, 20k there, 100+ if you murder an entire pirate gang by yourself probably won't, since you don't play a lot or have friends that can join you. Didn't seem fair.
Missions themselves need a huge boost in payout. You've created an in game economy where you jump from 5 million to 50 million dollar ships. I know you planned the vulture to fill that gap but no fighter can. And even if it could it would take months in a T-6 to get that much money.
And why shouldn't a slave run net you 200k? It's so nice for me, who bought the game at launch, to be able to afford ships that my playing time would not allow for using the missions that previously were a joke. 8k there, 20k there, 100+ if you murder an entire pirate gang by yourself probably won't, since you don't play a lot or have friends that can join you. Didn't seem fair.
Missions themselves need a huge boost in payout. You've created an in game economy where you jump from 5 million to 50 million dollar ships. I know you planned the vulture to fill that gap but no fighter can. And even if it could it would take months in a T-6 to get that much money.
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I think its fairly safe to say that yes, because of the noise created on the forums, they (fd) reacted to it. Same situation as the "luxury goods" and "rare trading" etc