Hi,
First post here so forgive me if this has been discussed for years. I've been playing ED for about 45 days now. I love it. Went from ED to Horizons after the first couple of weeks and went from playing with a controller to a Hotas X to an X52 pro after about a month. I think this game is a great platform for expansion and I'm looking forward to future updates.
Let's get some things out of the way first. I think the "grind" is fine. I don't mind playing for a couple months to save up for that shiny new ship or to get the appropriate Empire/Federation/whatever rank. I enjoy it. I enjoy doing deliveries for factions, bounty hunting, trading, almost all of it. But there are a couple of things I think could be improved.
1. The time invested vs. risk vs. payout balance is lacking
I like doing a variety of missions, but when I balance the pros and cons of various missions or activity types, I find the ones that take significant time or involve a significant risk to my ship pale in comparison to deliver X to Y missions. And at the point of the game where I am at, money and rank progression with factions and superpowers means quite a bit. I can make 300k in deliveries in the time it takes to do one recovery mission, e.g., go to a system, drop in to the nav beacon, scan it, travel to the indicated location, fly around till it says "mission objective located", ...
2. The death penalty is steep.
Because making the rebuy on my Asp takes me an average playing session (I typically can only play for a few hours after work), I find myself just simply avoiding combat. I'm not complaining about interdictions. I know the drill -- submit, boost, FSD, boost, with maybe some chaff thrown in there. I'm not even complaining about back to back interdictions only dozens of light years from my destination. I just wish that I didn't have to run away. But the risk just isn't worth it. Which is a shame because I think the combat is very fun.
What can be done? I'm guessing the mission balance thing is hard, but it seems like, assuming the risk is constant, the payout should be a function of the expected completion time. That said here are a few suggestions.
A. Have some combat missions where you fly ships provided by your employers. E.g. join a squadron of Eagles in some combat zone -- maybe being transported to the zone as a passenger and then transported back after mission end -- say 15 minutes in zone is what you signed up for and you get mission completion pay + a per ship killed bonus.
B. Have combat missions like "destroy the generators", etc. not make you wanted -- war is war and I shouldn't be marked as a criminal if I'm a soldier. Perhaps this is only if the system is at war/civil war and only if the mission is against the explicit faction enemy
C. Re-evaluate the current death penalty. ED seems to equate dangerous with costly, but there are plenty of other ways to enforce a death penalty that doesn't discriminate against players who have not amassed hundreds if not billions of credits. For example, instead of a rebuy, you instead can choose to rent (for a very small fee) a hauler from the closest system and go to your death site. If you successfully extract your components, then the hull is simply printed up for a small fee. Or for a bit more you can hire an NPC salvage crew to grab the remains of your ship. If you do that, you get a "rental" sidewinder (which, for a fee or in exchange for bonus miles, you can get upgraded to a Cobra or something). The time till you get your ship back could be similar in both cases -- I'm thinking 20 to 30 minutes. The "I died so I can't fly my custom Asp for 30 minutes" seems an appropriate death penalty which scales appropriately to all players -- something that hard cash just doesn't do. It also has a very believable in-game mechanic.
Anyway, that's all. Cheers and thanks for reading.
TLDR: Another newbie want everything for no effort ;P
First post here so forgive me if this has been discussed for years. I've been playing ED for about 45 days now. I love it. Went from ED to Horizons after the first couple of weeks and went from playing with a controller to a Hotas X to an X52 pro after about a month. I think this game is a great platform for expansion and I'm looking forward to future updates.
Let's get some things out of the way first. I think the "grind" is fine. I don't mind playing for a couple months to save up for that shiny new ship or to get the appropriate Empire/Federation/whatever rank. I enjoy it. I enjoy doing deliveries for factions, bounty hunting, trading, almost all of it. But there are a couple of things I think could be improved.
1. The time invested vs. risk vs. payout balance is lacking
I like doing a variety of missions, but when I balance the pros and cons of various missions or activity types, I find the ones that take significant time or involve a significant risk to my ship pale in comparison to deliver X to Y missions. And at the point of the game where I am at, money and rank progression with factions and superpowers means quite a bit. I can make 300k in deliveries in the time it takes to do one recovery mission, e.g., go to a system, drop in to the nav beacon, scan it, travel to the indicated location, fly around till it says "mission objective located", ...
2. The death penalty is steep.
Because making the rebuy on my Asp takes me an average playing session (I typically can only play for a few hours after work), I find myself just simply avoiding combat. I'm not complaining about interdictions. I know the drill -- submit, boost, FSD, boost, with maybe some chaff thrown in there. I'm not even complaining about back to back interdictions only dozens of light years from my destination. I just wish that I didn't have to run away. But the risk just isn't worth it. Which is a shame because I think the combat is very fun.
What can be done? I'm guessing the mission balance thing is hard, but it seems like, assuming the risk is constant, the payout should be a function of the expected completion time. That said here are a few suggestions.
A. Have some combat missions where you fly ships provided by your employers. E.g. join a squadron of Eagles in some combat zone -- maybe being transported to the zone as a passenger and then transported back after mission end -- say 15 minutes in zone is what you signed up for and you get mission completion pay + a per ship killed bonus.
B. Have combat missions like "destroy the generators", etc. not make you wanted -- war is war and I shouldn't be marked as a criminal if I'm a soldier. Perhaps this is only if the system is at war/civil war and only if the mission is against the explicit faction enemy
C. Re-evaluate the current death penalty. ED seems to equate dangerous with costly, but there are plenty of other ways to enforce a death penalty that doesn't discriminate against players who have not amassed hundreds if not billions of credits. For example, instead of a rebuy, you instead can choose to rent (for a very small fee) a hauler from the closest system and go to your death site. If you successfully extract your components, then the hull is simply printed up for a small fee. Or for a bit more you can hire an NPC salvage crew to grab the remains of your ship. If you do that, you get a "rental" sidewinder (which, for a fee or in exchange for bonus miles, you can get upgraded to a Cobra or something). The time till you get your ship back could be similar in both cases -- I'm thinking 20 to 30 minutes. The "I died so I can't fly my custom Asp for 30 minutes" seems an appropriate death penalty which scales appropriately to all players -- something that hard cash just doesn't do. It also has a very believable in-game mechanic.
Anyway, that's all. Cheers and thanks for reading.
TLDR: Another newbie want everything for no effort ;P
