Smuggling missions now pointless.

[Ziljan]

That's a theory. It has holes though. Why wait 2 weeks? Because it's a company who can't knee-jerk react to these things.

Why didn't they have the correct fix handy, if this was all planned? Their communications and the way it was handled smells like a "whoopsie" to me.


Fixed that for you

I didn't say FD was without fault, or that I agreed with their solutions. But if you look at every patch, they issue changes that have extremely broken levels of exploitable income. Which are then squashed at a perfect 2 week interval after the patch was initially released. You could be right, and it could be a total coincidence that each patch creates an accidental loophole turns out to be a bug that nets a similarly obscene rate of income. But that seems a little too convenient.

The so-called "whoopsie" reaction seemed more like a, "uh-oh, this is not only extremely popular, but people are actually having fun, how do we tell them this is about to get a scheduled deletion without creating a riot? Oh, I know, we'll tell them that it will be fixed again in the future... " really that fix would take them about as much time as it took to delete the missions. They issued a blanket fractional multiplier on their spawn chance, when they could have issued a blanket fractional multiplier on their payout rate instead. Why a semi-deletion rather than a reduction in payout? Now that is something I am still scratching my head over. The obvious difference in effect between deletion and balancing mission payouts is that rarity means that most lower ranked traders couldn't just do smuggling runs anymore. So If I had to guess, I'd say it was probably to prevent the inevitable burnout from OCD single-tasking, and because they want people to invest themselves in their other content and stick around, gathering momentum for Horizons. But that is just a guess.

 

[Oogie Boogie]

Missions still working but to need to wait several hours to get the nice ones. Picked up around 13 missions within 2,5 hours and made 67 millions profit (total 4 hours).

But I agree. It is more exiting to watch grass grow. Missions are done for me for now.

 

[Harbottle]

Re Smuggling missions; Here's a couple of ideas that I think may benefit the situation as it stands, but whether they're practical in game I will leave others to judge and I suspect they may have been mentioned elsewhere but as I'm only an occasional lurker I could have missed them.



1) The payout on the smuggling missions should be dependent on the distance in supercruise to the station not the hyperspace distance in lightyears. This would help prevent the same type of mission stacking occurring that we did at Sothis, if the time given for completing the missions was reduced. This could also enable a clearer correlation between danger and reward to be established



2) The payment should be based partially around how much time has passed since a previous player had taken a mission from that particular board, making it more profitable to wander about from station to station rather than farm the same station over and over again.

 

[lovely lovely]

I just arrived back in Robigo after a week away. Been here 10 minutes and picked up 7 missions, total worth 11 million (46 Tonnes) All going to Pathan.

Will hang around for 30 mins and see if some high rank missions appear.

Smuggling missions or just the boring olde milk run stuff?

- - - Updated - - -

Missions still working but to need to wait several hours to get the nice ones. Picked up around 13 missions within 2,5 hours and made 67 millions profit (total 4 hours).

But I agree. It is more exiting to watch grass grow. Missions are done for me for now.

I've got one since being way out the last 2 hours :-(

 

[777Driver]

Smuggling missions or just the boring olde milk run stuff?

- - - Updated - - -



I've got one since being way out the last 2 hours :-(

17 missions left on my list, 132 tonnes, only 3 are smuggling missions. TBH I don't find the normal missions boring, it feels a little more realistic flying a long way, waiting 30/40 minutes for the cargo hold to fill up, then delivering to multiple drop offs. Kinda beats loading up 532T of cargo instantly, taking it somewhere in 8 minutes.. rinse and repeat..

I've made a list of remote systems to collect missions from, a nice variation from the normal Robigo runs I had been doing previously.

 

[Bacalao]

17 missions left on my list, 132 tonnes, only 3 are smuggling missions. TBH I don't find the normal missions boring, it feels a little more realistic flying a long way, waiting 30/40 minutes for the cargo hold to fill up, then delivering to multiple drop offs. Kinda beats loading up 532T of cargo instantly, taking it somewhere in 8 minutes.. rinse and repeat..

I've made a list of remote systems to collect missions from, a nice variation from the normal Robigo runs I had been doing previously.

Mission driven trading is much more rewarding, smuggling or legitimate, it just seems to make more sense than the day trading-esque commodity market rigmarole. Hopefully they go more in depth with it, the long range smuggling was a step in a good direction, maybe a bit of a haphazard step, but certainly toward a place I'd like to see it go.

 

[Tarman]

Mission driven trading is much more rewarding, smuggling or legitimate, it just seems to make more sense than the day trading-esque commodity market rigmarole. Hopefully they go more in depth with it, the long range smuggling was a step in a good direction, maybe a bit of a haphazard step, but certainly toward a place I'd like to see it go.

I like the mission-based stuff for my Cobratic wandering game. It gets me all over the galaxy in an interesting way, and I can stop in for the "weekly episode" if I find a place that's particularly interesting or happening, like a CG or a neat set of faction events.

 

[Andromalius]

Do you actually honestly think FD would have changed the situation if the effect it created was intended? You actually believe FD has tested the mode switching, thought: yeah, that's fine. But reversed it only after and only because it caused an issue?

Er, mode switching is still there. By your definition they intend people to play that way then ? Because all their nerf did was require more mode switching and making it mandatory.

 

[thesnowdog]

Well, I sorta understand, a little, maybe, but really, the game is not about earning credits as fast as you can. Don't wish to be impolite - but just asking - you do get that, right? It's not like you are in a competition against other players or anything, and anyway, aren't smugglers and pirates usually struggling to make a living? I think the game is designed to be a spaceship commander sim isn't it? It's all about flying around and doing various things. The credits just allow you to buy ships from time to time - that's about it really. If the goal was to earn credits quickly then go and do something that does that for you for a short time and then buy your ship and shift back to your other career. In my view (just mine, although I think it is largely shared) there is no grind because what others call a grind is, to me, what the game is about - flying a spaceship.

Very much this ^^^

I can't understand people complaining about grinding. The original game was exactly the same. It would be pointless playing the game if it was easy to gain Elite status across the board. It's a challenge to become Elite and it should be.

I think it's an age thing tbh. A great deal of gamers these days haven't been playing video games for that long and are used to games being easy - aim assist, automatic health regeneration, average playthrough time of 5-6 hours to complete a game. All of this was done by the upper management of developers and especially publishers so that QA staff can do at least one playthrough per working day. It was also done because for some strange reason the majority of game reviewers aren't that good at playing games. It's pretty bizarre tbh, game reviewers need to have an aptitude test of some sort before being allowed anywhere near reviewing a game.

That last point is one of two bugbears of mine regarding the industry, the second one is developers and publishers requiring games designers to have a design degree before even getting an interview. All you need to design games and game mechanics is common sense and experience of actually playing the damn things to know what works and what doesn't work. It's not rocket surgery.

Sorry, I've digressed a bit there lol

 

[Vandaahl]

Er, mode switching is still there. By your definition they intend people to play that way then ? Because all their nerf did was require more mode switching and making it mandatory.

Wut? Have you ever switched between them?

You can switch modes for an hour now and you might end up with 2 smuggling missions. Together with flying there and back again renders switching pointless. Trucking poo in a T9 will earn you more than watching a list change to your advantage. Switching modes does not spawn new missions, you just switch between 2 servers containing a different mission list. If you start on list A (lets say open) and take one mission, switch to solo where is nothing interesting so you switch back to open, you end up with the same list you started with, without the mission you just took. The only pro is you have 2 lists with both their own heart beat, but what if both barely spawn a smuggling mission (like it is today). Switching modes never has been the problem and never will. The amount of missions that were spawned was ridiculous. One could have made millions without switching. Switching modes was just icing on the cake.

Btw, I'm talking from a Tycoon perspective. I hit Elite yesterday, so the whole situation might have changed for me. I'm about to find out

 

[TheCyanDragon]

Robigo is where I go. Sometimes the missions aren't quite that profitable, but I'll gladly take the 'trash' 850k missions all at once and make about 7 million a run, in about an hour.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Er, mode switching is still there. By your definition they intend people to play that way then ? Because all their nerf did was require more mode switching and making it mandatory.

In all of this you failed to answer: do you honestly believe the way people where using mode switching to gain more missions was intended by FD?

Because I don't want to insult your intelligence by assuming you do. I think you realize they didn't intend this situation to occur. That makes the use of mode switching to gain an unintended advantage the textbook definition of an exploit.

The sentiment that causes people not to want to call it an exploit is that they attribute the same characteristics of cheating to the exploit. And it's not cheating. It's well within the rules of the game. It's just a loophole which players took advantage of for a while. And unless you derive your fun by making so much more credits than those who play the game as intended by the developers, the LRSM will be back and you can do the same missions again. I guess they'll have stricter time constraints or need more cargo space so this exploit becomes less of an issue.

The nerf lowered the disparity in cr/h. Which is what it was intended to do. I'm not even agreeing with the nature of the nerf, because it indeed did impact those who did not want to use the exploit.

 

[Roybe]

In all of this you failed to answer: do you honestly believe the way people where using mode switching to gain more missions was intended by FD?

Because I don't want to insult your intelligence by assuming you do. I think you realize they didn't intend this situation to occur. That makes the use of mode switching to gain an unintended advantage the textbook definition of an exploit.

The sentiment that causes people not to want to call it an exploit is that they attribute the same characteristics of cheating to the exploit. And it's not cheating. It's well within the rules of the game. It's just a loophole which players took advantage of for a while. And unless you derive your fun by making so much more credits than those who play the game as intended by the developers, the LRSM will be back and you can do the same missions again. I guess they'll have stricter time constraints or need more cargo space so this exploit becomes less of an issue.

The nerf lowered the disparity in cr/h. Which is what it was intended to do. I'm not even agreeing with the nature of the nerf, because it indeed did impact those who did not want to use the exploit.

Well if it's not intended, then it should be fixed. That is the problem. If it cannot be stopped, then it has to be accepted as part of the game. <shrug> Is station ramming an exploit? I dunno. The players doing this seem to do so with impunity. They are basically playing 'Elite: Traffic Cop'....emergent gameplay? I dunno. But if it isn't repaired and it isn't reprimanded by the devs...again, we have to accept that it's part of the game.
.

 

[bassman]

The sentiment that causes people not to want to call it an exploit is that they attribute the same characteristics of cheating to the exploit. And it's not cheating. It's well within the rules of the game.

Most exploits involve relatively obscure and non-obvious combinations of actions that were not forseen or intended by the designers, mode switching is a primary feature of the game, the fact that it can be so easily used to "game" the system is just monumentally bad design plain and simple and symptomatic of FDs propensity for virtual dice rolling as the primary means of content generation in the game (instead of persistent emergent and logically coherent content). I mean whats FDs defence here - "oh it never occured to us that someone might mode switch while docked in a station ...".

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Most exploits involve relatively obsuce and non-obvious combinations of actions that were not forseen or intended by the designers, mode switching is a primary feature of the game, the fact that it can be so easily used to "game" the system is just monumentally bad design plain and simple.

Oh you'll get no argument from me there. The whole galaxy could do with a lot more persistency.

 

[Vasious]

Why is it on this forum that anything;
that isnt tens of millions of cr/hr = useless
that isnt an upgrade on the last super bestest ship = useless
That isnt granting an immediate and excessive reward = useless

Different people find different things fun.

 

[clivewil]

because it indeed did impact those who did not want to use the exploit.

absolutely correct, and exactly why i loathe and oppose the nerf.

i don't care if player XYZ has just bought 2 new Anacondas or has a gazillion trillion credits in his bank account. but if every time i log in and see nothing but low-value crap on the BB, i care about that a lot. and i usually quit the game immediately after.

if excess smuggling was the issue, why not just nerf smuggling missions? instead of globally reducing the frequency of decent missions of ALL types. i was running bounty hunting missions from LFT 926, so why punish me for something that some gooseneck was doing way over in Sothis? the nerf ruined the game for me in a major way.

HATING the nerf.

 

[Tarman]

Why is it on this forum that anything;
that isnt tens of millions of cr/hr = useless
that isnt an upgrade on the last super bestest ship = useless
That isnt granting an immediate and excessive reward = useless

Different people find different things fun.

Games are serious business! Some people play them like they're at a real job, so efficiency and productivity and recognition of effort are what drive their experience. Personally I do not know how this is fun at all, but it happens enough that it must be for those that play as such.

 

[Mikey2305]

Because it gives 'significance' to what can otherwise be a dull, empty and unfulfilled life. If it wasn't this it would be something else...

 

[signal11th]

Why is it on this forum that anything;
that isnt tens of millions of cr/hr = useless
that isnt an upgrade on the last super bestest ship = useless
That isnt granting an immediate and excessive reward = useless

Different people find different things fun.

Exactly so everyone's opinion is as valid as the other, just because you like to treat this game like a second job is fine by me just as the way I play the is just ok. You will notice in none of my posts about this was it ever about having the best being the best it was about a set of missions that actually made me enjoy the game (with a whole lot of other people) and this wasnt balanced but nuked. Unfortunately I haven't played much at all since the nuke which is a shame but I just don't find running trash for 20k a time fun anymore.
You might and I have no problem with that at all but I find it just a mind boringly repetative exercise. I made exactly 4.2 million over 2 weeks of smuggling missions so I wasn't greedy but god I was having fun.