I'm rich- plz nerf everything!

Terrorism missions, essentially?

yep, although possibly other things as well, however imo if FD are to keep missions which you can do in a cobra but pay as well as "super traders - ships which cost upwards of 70 million and with 5 million in cargo invested" there needs to be a huge risk to counter the reward, and imo having them as incredibly nefarious is the only way.
the current, smuggle "X item" 100LY+ to "Y station" of an item where the exact same thing can be purchased legally 1 jump from the target station just makes no sense.

I am seguing here, but, another profitable (but less so than above of course) way of doing it could be tying in the rares trading.

if you are at a distant outpost and you get a mission to get a couple of tons of (totally random) rare item, and you get a fairly tight time span to do it, that could be quite good too. That would depend on some form of algorithm for the game working out roughly how long it should take to do it however ,and then adding some extra time in for a bit of wiggle room. this makes sense because there is only 1 place where you can get a specific rare from and they are in limited supply.

this is not exactly what op is about but it is imo tightly tied to it... not nerfing pay outs per se, but making the huge payouts logical.
 
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I've dev'd for an online RPG. I'm speaking from personal experience.

Then you've been on the receiving end of the content treadmill, you have my sympathy! But you must understand why they constantly want more? The whole models driven for it, subscriptions, achievements, schedules, timed content, mmo's are entirely focused on the late game.

I don't blame the players for that, nor do I blame the developers who have to try and fill that niche, if anything what I can't understand is why when everything is so late game focused a vast majority of the development time is spent on what is essentially a pacing mechanic to teach players skills. Vanilla WoW lasted absolutely ages by modern standards before we got cries for more content, probably because it actually launched with enough (and information wasn't so readily available to power through everything)

For say the top 0.1% of the playerbase, there will never be enough content because they play 16 hours a day but for everyone else and your completely right about them, but its a tiny group of players. The issue is when the normal players are complaining, then it isn't that they are whining unnecessarily its that they genuinely don't have enough content.

I'll take an example I know fairly well like Burning Crusade, if you took all the content added by blizzard to that from karazhan to say black temple (sunwell can diaf), I genuinely think it would have taken at least a year before the regular raid guilds ran out of content. Instead by releasing it piecemeal with seperate parts its always immediately consumed by the starving playerbase. That isn't an issue with players or the main development staff, its that the leads don't understand how much content is actually required :p
 
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Majinvash

Banned
We seem to be getting away from the PvP/PvE antagonism on the board, which is progress. Some of the most notorious player gangs say they're moving on, while some of the best known PvP groups are embracing the BGS and even recruiting PvE players. I think this is a good thing both for our collective in game experience and for the long term viability of the game. Griefers are always going to be present in on line gaming, but one of their main shields- the pretence that they're 'just interested in PvP'- has been lost. The groups who have proven themselves to be most competent in player on player combat and most willing to embrace other game activities to support their PvP focus are thriving. At the same time player gangs insisting that the game is somehow deficient because it doesn't force every player weaker than themselves to offer themselves as a sacrifice to their 'Eve in cockpits' fantasy are getting bored, restless and considering playing something else. While losing players is never a good thing, perhaps losing a small number of the most vocal exponents of activities that many consider griefing is better than losing large numbers of players to the annoyance, frustration and aggravation that their activities invoke.

Naturally, we're going to have to find something else to moan about! :D

Sorta and kinda not.

Tarring ALL PVP groups with the same intent is unfair, even for the bad guys.

Many WANT to care about the BSG, truly. We just don't and because of that, there isn't much else left to do.
There are things we care about and things we don't.

The current state of the game just doesn't give a PVP group anything back and PVP players by nature get very bored with grinding.

Whether its early game in a fleet of Vipers or end game rolling around in the most boring ship of all, the Cutter.
Many groups want something to work towards that gives them something they can be (I guess the best description would be) proud of.

We thought we had this with Powerplay. All the naughties grouped together under Archon and hoped to rain chaos throughout the galaxy. Fighting for dominance and blah blah blah.
Early days of Powerplay, random groups would work together under the same banner simply because it was a team work thing. Working towards the pirate weapons! YARR!
It made the empty game make sense, even for a moment.
What did we got ( Other than a troll weapon ) was a new way to grind NPCs or a new way to take X from A to B and repeat to infinity. Only reward for grinding was ... MORE credits ... yay!! zzzz

Whether there are some Semi PVP groups that PVE as well, that doesn't change the fact that most PVP groups don't want to grind to see no reward other than a name on a station they cannot interact with or MORE credits.

If when we got our in game faction we could have aligned to it, had some form of control over the station, its politics, function, make it give us cheaper outfitting or ANYTHING different and unique that made it stand out from EVERY SINGLE OTHER station in the game. You could be damn sure we would have fought for it ( Even though again this game would screw us over because everyone in every other mode could shadow ninja us )

So we realise now that our expectations of this game where higher than FD can produce, which leaves us with the current state of play and constant forum sniping.
We get told by one half that we bought the wrong game, the other half have fairly simple requests which would add some depth and get told backer this, Braben that, MM"NO"

We pirates, pirated for the excitement and challenge.
Sometimes we even made money! You say there was no challenge in grabbing a T6.. Well it was more challenging than anything NPC related and the chance for some fun interactions was there and OFTEN happened.
We robbed, kidnaps, blockaded and flipped a famous system to independent.

Now I know I have gone off topic quite a bit but early days of pirating was amazing and the ship choice was a lot more fun and varied.
Before everyone worked out how to make hundreds of millions in a few hours, we had at best Clippers ( Mostly B spec ), Asps, Cobras and Vipers. With limited rebuys.
We had in our team at the time 2 Anacondas and 1 Python. When we had our wing combat with Cosmic state, it was so much better than today.
Small ships buzzing around nipping at the big ships, real panic when a big ship was masslocked ( this was before everyone worked out the high waking made all PVP a moot point ) proper dog fighting and ships dying when their shields finally got dropped. The anacondas were to be feared as Large lasers and PA's ruined an Asps day really quick. ( Yes the Asp was once one of the best PVP ships ).

Problem is that with everyone having access to all ships and having easy access to more money than you can spend, it very quickly becomes big ships or the meta ship ( FDZZZZZZZZZZZL ).

I don't know what could be done to put it back to how it was and that is a real shame and something VERY few players in this game will ever experience.

If the Naughty PVP groups left this game there would be much rejoicing from the PVE community and then after a few months of photos of binary suns, Asps on planets and 40 minute videos of wings of Cutters shooting endless NPC's in a CZ. People would be crying out for something to do or to rally against. Even AA with their holier than thou attitude, would be bored of protecting their system from well.. Nothing... Maybe a random bored player at best.

This is slightly rambling but i'm really bored at a vendor training session. This guys voice is so flat.. its like listening to a pillow.. zzz

More later after the latest slide show has finished.. Oh wait... Teabreak! AND there are biscuits!

Majinvash
The Voice of Open
 
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I don't see FD rebalancing the game to suit the demands of the space rich. The billionaires with their fleets of Anacondas, Corvettes and Cutters are a vocal minority. The average player is a long way away from having rich people's problems.

I like to look at the traffic reports when I dock to see how busy the system is and get an idea of what kind of players I might bump into. I don't see a galaxy awash with rich pilots with expensive ships.

I'm currently sitting in Cupis and here's the breakdown of the 253 ships that passed through in the last 24 hours:

Adder - 19
Sidewinder - 52
Cobra MkIII - 54
Eagle - 20
Type-6 - 19
Viper MkIII - 17
Anaconda - 15
Hauler - 14
FDS - 2
Vulture - 6
Python - 4
Asp X - 7
Type-7 - 1
DBS - 3
FAS - 2
Asp S - 2
FDL - 2
DBX - 4

Sure it's close to a starter system so you would expect more small ships. But wherever I go the pattern is the same. A few big ships but the majority of the traffic is in ships with < 10 million Cr hulls. Even at the trading CGs where nearly everyone is bringing out the biggest ship they can fly you still see plenty of people taking part in their Type-6s, Cobras and even smaller.

It's not possible to design a game that is ideal for a player base that includes the harassed parent with 2 hours per week to play, the bored underemployed, the hardcore role players and BGS enthusiasts, the PVP diehards, the PVE chill crew and the min/max power gamers who get their rush from seeing numbers increasing as fast as possible.

I'm trusting that FD doesn't let the loud voices of the few overweigh the needs of the majority. In fact the survival of the 10 year project relies on them attracting new players and engaging and retaining players for as long as possible so that they buy more expansions, skins and other doodahs. Sure throw the super rich a bone to keep them playing (though I think it's really up to the players to create more content) but don't rebalance things simply to suit them.
 
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Then you've been on the receiving end of the content treadmill, you have my sympathy! But you must understand why they constantly want more? The whole models driven for it, subscriptions, achievements, schedules, timed content, mmo's are entirely focused on the late game.

I don't blame the players for that, nor do I blame the developers who have to try and fill that niche, if anything what I can't understand is why when everything is so late game focused a vast majority of the development time is spent on what is essentially a pacing mechanic to teach players skills. Vanilla WoW lasted absolutely ages by modern standards before we got cries for more content, probably because it actually launched with enough (and information wasn't so readily available to power through everything)

For say the top 0.1% of the playerbase, there will never be enough content because they play 16 hours a day but for everyone else and your completely right about them, but its a tiny group of players. The issue is when the normal players are complaining, then it isn't that they are whining unnecessarily its that they genuinely don't have enough content.

I'll take an example I know fairly well like Burning Crusade, if you took all the content added by blizzard to that from karazhan to say black temple (sunwell can diaf), I genuinely think it would have taken at least a year before the regular raid guilds ran out of content. Instead by releasing it piecemeal with seperate parts its always immediately consumed by the starving playerbase. That isn't an issue with players or the main development staff, its that the leads don't understand how much content is actually required :p

I was there for the whole Vanilla experience. Onyxia wasn't even in the game at launch; all there was for raiders was MC. What really made Vanilla and to a lesser extent TBC content last longer is the total lack of 'catch-up' content, requiring new players to go through each tier to be viable at the current end-game starting with 5-mans. Starting a new character was a real investment, and the extra time spent leveling helped immerse the player in the world. Later expansions saw Blizzard dramatically reducing the time content took to complete, truncating 5-mans and raids and dumbing down the content to the point where the only thing requiring any strategy at all were the Heroic raid bosses.

Elite, like Vanilla, doesn't really have much for the hardcore crowd to do once they have all the fancy toys and have become expert in their use. There's no option to start a second CMDR without buying another game key or wiping your save so you can't really replay the early game without sacrifice of some kind (months of work, or legal tender). Elite-ranked missions are identical in form to Mostly Harmless. Horizons didn't really scratch that itch for many players either.
 
Then you've been on the receiving end of the content treadmill, you have my sympathy!

Thanks and yes. No matter what you do, they will always want more. Its a game you cannot win, so its best not playing it.

Would you like a game of tic-tac-toe?
 
Thanks and yes. No matter what you do, they will always want more. Its a game you cannot win, so its best not playing it.

Would you like a game of tic-tac-toe?

I'd like a game where there was content coming out of everyones ears when it launched so I can have a decent comparison! But thats very unlikely so yes tic-tac-toe it is ;)
 
Tarring ALL PVP groups with the same intent is unfair, even for the bad guys.

Agreed.

If the Naughty PVP groups left this game there would be much rejoicing from the PVE community and then after a few months of photos of binary suns, Asps on planets and 40 minute videos of wings of Cutters shooting endless NPC's in a CZ. People would be crying out for something to do or to rally against. Even AA with their holier than thou attitude, would be bored of protecting their system from well.. Nothing... Maybe a random bored player at best.

Disagree! :D The good PvP groups can still play against the other good PvP groups and get their kicks. Good Fed remain enemies of Good Empire etc. And there is nothing wrong with bad groups in terms of nasty pirates, as long as the players themselves are decent chaps and chapettes. But the PvEers, they wouldn't miss the bad PvP groups for even a second.

Aunt

The Voice of Tea and Biscuits.
 


If the Naughty PVP groups left this game there would be much rejoicing from the PVE community and then after a few months of photos of binary suns, Asps on planets and 40 minute videos of wings of Cutters shooting endless NPC's in a CZ. People would be crying out for something to do or to rally against. …

You really don't understand the mindset of PvE players. :)

No, they won't get bored and if they - for some reason that isn't the absence of PvP conflict - become bored the last thing they would want is a group of other players to rally against (unless on the forums - apparently).

That's the basic error in a lot of discussions about PvP vs PvE. PvP groups don't add anything enjoyable to the gameplay of a pure PvE oriented player.

I'm not saying that PvP is bad or wrong or should stop being part of Open Mode or this game.
 
every game needs credit and time sinks, personally i do everything i can to slow my progression, whilst not doing things which make no sense in a game where i am trying to actually role play...

So what ED needs is more time sinks.... but they have to be "cool" ones, and not just grind for the sake of grind. .... for me, the big win, and quite obvious, would be npc ships crew. There could be a whole RPG element tied to these, with the more skilled crew being the most difficult to get, however they could get injured in battles where you ship takes a pounding, and die , or at least a good chance of death, when your ship blows up.

that way even if you have the perfect complement of crew, you will probably not have them for ever so you will be on the lookout for more, and a rich bank balance should not be the answer to getting the best either.

I think the ships locked to faction status is a decent start, that adds some content to work for no matter your wealth.

PvP has nothing to do with it however........ sure PvP does offer an avenue for some when they have everything in the game, but unless FD want to uturn and make ED a primarily PvP focused game - which i hope they do not - then the main answer to longevity in ED is in more PvE complexity imo.
 
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every game needs credit and time sinks, personally i do everything i can to slow my progression, whilst not doing things which make no sense in a game where i am trying to actually role play...

So what ED needs is more time sinks.... but they have to be "cool" ones, and not just grind for the sake of grind. .... for me, the big win, and quite obvious, would be npc ships crew. There could be a whole RPG element tied to these, with the more skilled crew being the most difficult to get, however they could get injured in battles where you ship takes a pounding, and die , or at least a good chance of death, when your ship blows up.

that way even if you have the perfect complement of crew, you will probably not have them for ever so you will be on the lookout for more, and a rich bank balance should not be the answer to getting the best either.

I think the ships locked to faction status is a decent start, that adds some content to work for no matter your wealth.

I would dearly love this feature, or one very much akin to it.

Sadly FDev seem to be against the idea of NPC crew and I can't fathom why.
 

Majinvash

Banned
Disagree! :D The good PvP groups can still play against the other good PvP groups and get their kicks. Good Fed remain enemies of Good Empire etc. And there is nothing wrong with bad groups in terms of nasty pirates, as long as the players themselves are decent chaps and chapettes. But the PvEers, they wouldn't miss the bad PvP groups for even a second.

How many photos of Asps on a planet can you handle?

Empire could be fighting the Federation right now but they don't really and if they do no one knows about it to get involved or excited by it.
The 13th is trying to RP the HELL out of this and I know they are bored of the results. Some of their founding member have just stopped playing.

There are no Empire vs Federation CG's that are interesting enough to mobilise that many people, a whole bunch of the recent CG's have failed to reach any of the tiers of early CG's.
( Mostly because the work vs reward isn't as good as Robigo ). Most of that is done in a private group or solo anyway.
You can get 15% discount on ships in some areas of space at all times and so many people have traded to elite through smuggling that founders is open to them.
So the rewards from CG's are lack lustre.

The game needs bad guys to make it interesting, bad guys need something worth doing.

Majinvash
The Voice of Open
 
How many photos of Asps on a planet can you handle?
Asp, being the oogly ship that it is, is a bad example.

For other ships I actually have an answer. 476 approved wallpapers cycling around on my desktop, and with all the other screenshots combined: 46.6 gigabyte.

And counting :)

The game needs bad guys to make it interesting, bad guys need something worth doing.

Majinvash
The Voice of Open
Take photos of Bad Asps on planets!
 


The game needs bad guys to make it interesting, bad guys need something worth doing.


The game needs NPC bad guys (gals) for the PvE crowd - and player bad guys/gals for the PvP crowd. And the player "bad" guys/gals need to be embedded in a believable lore, gameplay mechanic that make interaction wit them interesting for the PvE/PvP crowd.

Everybody needs …
 

Majinvash

Banned
Asp, being the oogly ship that it is, is a bad example.

You take that back, right meow!

AUm76LN.jpg


It is a thing of beauty

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

The game needs NPC bad guys (gals) for the PvE crowd - and player bad guys/gals for the PvP crowd. And the player "bad" guys/gals need to be embedded in a believable lore, gameplay mechanic that make interaction wit them interesting for the PvE/PvP crowd.

Everybody needs …

Probably the first time i have ever agreed with you

Everybody hurts....

Majinvash
The Voice of Open
 
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