Credits ... Are we making too much or too little?

[Schmack]

If you're hauling passengers you can make billions in a few days. If you're mining and doing blue collar work, you know, supporting the lives of the entire galaxy? You'll be lucky to afford the ship you're in, gas is almost out of the question. Mining needs some love. The fact that factions have to offer extra cash to lure you into the money pit is evidence of that. I don't think you should be making 100 million credits an hour grinding out rocks and ice, but you should be able to have days where you can make a big haul. Otherwise why do it? We all need Cr, and even if we don't it's silly to go out doing things that don't add to your bottom line in some form.

I'm not a meta gamer, I don't chase the most efficient way possible to earn credits, and I like to mine but not for the hilariously low payouts.

 

[Schmack]

Anytime you think you're making "too much" feel free to spread it around, or blow it as you wish.

The rest of us are struggling to get by, especially with all the crazy crap they've done recently to the mission boards because of all the "I WANTZ MOAR HARD MOAD NAO!" spamming in the forums.

You want a harder game? Trying playing with your fingers duct taped or something- masochism isn't what we all fancy, you know.

It's too easy on one hand, but some of the same folks saying they want low jump ranges and harder encounters spend weeks engineering so they don't get that.

 

[sollisb]

I fall on the side of FAR too much! .. Every day I see people complaining they are not making Billions in 20 mins (OK that's an exaggeration) .. but to see people moan that making a million in ten mins is "an Insult" is bizarre for me, an old Elite fan. Elite has always been about the long haul, Progression and the journey, now all I am hearing is "It's all a grind"

The progression is so messed up that in 1 hour you can move from a sidewinder to a far more capable ship .. and still i see people saying it's too slow!
I can't be the only one who remembers the joy of getting military lasers or that energy bomb and feeling that I had achieved something. I feel that credits are far too easy to come by now that the game is losing it's original identity as a long haul game.

FD please don't increase the progression speed anymore, I bet a lot of players have never seen the inside of a Hauler.
I get that people want things quickly, but that has never been Elites way.

So don't do things that pay you too much?

And certainly don't presume you have the right to dictate my gameplay.

 

[MrFailfactory]

I find this game to be quite interesting in terms of wealth building - this game does indeed reward knowledge, and to a lesser extent, planning ahead, but the gap between doing an activity at a decent level of progression and doing that same activity at maximum progression is quite wide indeed.

I also find it interesting to see that a noticeably large portion of responders to threads like this clearly do not have this knowledge, or choose not to use it, and yet they generally are not the ones complaining. Very interesting, indeed.

As time goes on, the time spent in the early game will need to be reduced. Imagine hearing about the New Awesome that Frontier has released, so you go buy the game, only to realize that you have to spend ~6 months just getting to a place where you can engage in the New Awesome in any way that feels meaningful. That isn't a good way to welcome new players, generally speaking. Every MMO does this, usually in the form of (drastically) reducing the time it takes to get to maximum level. This is achieved either through a simple reduction in experience needed, or a comparative increase in power at the lower levels, or both. In terms of Elite, this means faster credits early in the game to allow new Commanders to get into the action (whatever that is for them) faster.

It's inevitable as new content is released, and it's already happened at least once in Elite, with likely one more time in the next couple of years.

As others have said, I think wealth-building is in a pretty good place overall right now.

Riôt

 

[Kerrash]

Found this accidentally but it seemed apt... [video]https://www.facebook.com/JungleVT/videos/1635928259882343/[/video]

 

[cheeseheads]

nerf all you want. i got my billion

 

[M00ka]

Even if they devalued the Credit by a couple of 0's, the situation would still be the same. There are players, even relative beginners who either have the knack or do the research and start reeling in obscene amounts of cash. These are the ones that will hunt down an exploit, spend hours hauling rares, everything they do is solely focused on making the maximum profit. These are often the ones that will jump ships quickly, always after the biggest ship that will make them the most money, and are prepared to take risks like foregoing that Shield Gen so they can fit an extra cargo rack. Then there is the rest of us who make a profit to fund what we want to do, no matter how small a step it is. It might be a simple as being able to fit out your ship so it is more suited to exploration, or something similar. It might just be something simple like always making sure you have sufficient funds for a few rebuys or enough cash to be able to buy that elusive module you have been looking for.

I know I will never be a billionaire in this game, I have too much fun doing things that don't make money like roaming around on a planet for half a day just cos I can or investigating USS's just incase there is something interesting there.

 

[Stealthie]

Well, IMHO, FD have it fairly backwards.

Early game is too fast, and late game is err... I dunno.. slow... Fast? Depends what you do.
Not many activities in ED scale well with ship size.

I dunno why FDev seem to have a problem organising this.

We already have engineers, Shinrata Dezra and naval rank, which are probably going to be unlocked as a player "progresses" through the game so, even if there's nothing else, those things can be used to scale rewards according to progress.

We've currently got Ram Tah offering a mission that pays Cr110m for a day's work and we've got Palin offering Cr20m for, erm, 15 minutes of fetching.
Why not make that a routine "thing"?
Set it up so that all the engineers have some kind of mission that they offer the player.
Give the first tier of engineers missions which pay, say, Cr1m, give the 2nd tier of engineers missions that pay Cr5m and give the top tier of engineers missions that pay Cr20m or whatever.

Sure, you could, theoretically, jump in a Sidey and set out to deliberately unlock all the engineers and use them to generate credits but, so what?
In general, I suspect that most players who unlock the top tier of engineers are probably already flying expensive ships are are looking for good sources of income.

Similar thing with Naval Rank and Shinrata Dezra.
Chances are that you WILL have already earned, and spent, a heap of credits before you gain access to SD or reach the top naval ranks, so create opportunities to earn decent credits based on those accomplishments.
Create well-paid missions offered by the Pilot's federation in SD and create missions which you're only eligible for as you unlock various naval ranks.

I don't think it's especially difficult to earn credits as things are but if there is a need to offer bigger opportunities to players who're flying expensive ships, there's already ways to implement it.

 

[krylite]

I came to ED a bit late, even though I had played FFE because I wasn't following PC gaming for a while. I was surprised when I first started, that billionaires were the norm and that there were constantly available exploits. I admire the acheivements of the devs and the sim itself, but I think they fell short on managing the MMO balance of the game. In most other MMOs/MMOrpgs, there is usually a team of mods on watch of the game balance itself and quickly stamp out exploits or fix them. However it seems Fdev let exploits and the mechanics of the exploits go on far too long up to months to a year at a time before something significant was done. Where it's probably too late now without resetting. For example, certain systems were isolated where missions were stackable to the same isolated target. It could have been fixed with creating neighboring populated worlds under the guise of new colonization since players were flocking to do business in the area. Now it's always going to be a problem even with devaluing the credit. Nerfing the payouts of the missions in the last year still should have been done imo. Interesting to see how it goes from here.

 

[damon8r351]

The current rate of credit gain is more or less fine, it's just that there needs to be more credit sinks in the game for those of us who like to self-nerf. Like being able to build our own base somewhere outside the Bubble, or pay for our own megaship. Or to be able to invest enough money in the controlling faction to be granted access to the Champagne Room. Or a new modification to the Rail Gun that allows us to fire credits into the sun in lieu of ammunition.

 

[lecorsobreton]

I think missions payouts are just fine. Rebuy costs are fine too, although it can sting sometimes. Only upkeep/maintenance costs are too low IMHO.

 

[Han Zulu]

The current rate of credit gain is more or less fine, it's just that there needs to be more credit sinks in the game for those of us who like to self-nerf. Like being able to build our own base somewhere outside the Bubble, or pay for our own megaship. Or to be able to invest enough money in the controlling faction to be granted access to the Champagne Room. Or a new modification to the Rail Gun that allows us to fire credits into the sun in lieu of ammunition.

Or hire NPC wings for expensive bucks. Like hiring protection for a trading ship for instance.

 

[Stealthie]

Or hire NPC wings for expensive bucks. Like hiring protection for a trading ship for instance.

That'd be a terrific idea except that, erm, it's not really like there's much need for it.

I mean, who's going to burn a heap of credits to hire a wing of NPCs for CP at a CG when they can just, y'know, play in Solo/Mobius instead?

I don't mean to mock though.
It really WOULD be a terrific thing... if they could figure out a way to make it useful.

Perhaps they could expand massacre missions into being ongoing things where you have to kill baddies in a system for, say, an entire week and you could hire NPCs to help?

 

[damon8r351]

I'd hire an NPC wing just for the sake of having an entourage. They don't really have to do anything, just look mean.

 

[GJ51]

You're making too much

I'm making too little

 

[Stealthie]

I'd hire an NPC wing just for the sake of having an entourage. They don't really have to do anything, just look mean.

Thing is, ideally that'd mean setting up a whole pile of other things too.

You could do it "on the cheap" just by adding it as an option to the "pilot's lounge" and giving you a choice ranging from newbies in Eagles to Elites in FdLs.

To do it "properly", though, you'd probably want it set up so you could hire all the NPCs in the current way, train them all up by flying an SLF for you and then actually buy a bunch of ships, upgrade them and engineer them and then allocate an NPC to each ship.

And that WOULD create a helluva credit-sink and allow you to travel around with an entourage of badass dudes in Vultures, FdLs or whatever.

 

[Red Anders]

I'm making plenty for me. Whether it would be enough for anybody else I have no idea.

 

[M00ka]

I'm making plenty for me. Whether it would be enough for anybody else I have no idea.

Perfectly said, in reality that is the only thing that matters!

 

[Sylveria]

Calls for self-nerf and credit sinks I can respect. What I don't abide is calls for changes in progression (which affects EVERYONE) because someone has 4 or 5 Cutters, 3 or 4 Corvettes and doesn't know what else to do with their time or money.

I've been playing this game for over 2 years... at my own pace. I work full time, and life calls so I do have responsibilities to attend to when I'm not playing ED.

I've yet to see 100 million credits at one time, let alone a billion. I've managed to scrape together enough to buy a few decent ships, like a Python (at one time, I sold it and went back to my AspX) and a tricked out DBX so I can do some long-haul Exploration, etc. Sure, I've never seen the inside of a Hauler... but I HAVE seen the inside of an Adder, Eagle, Viper MkIII and Mk IV, Cobra III (which I still use) and other ships, too.

What gets me is the pretentiousness of people who think their perspective must be the only perspective- and that they speak for everyone in the game or something.

There's this guy I knew years ago, who would go buy a game- then download cheat codes before he even began to play the game. Then he would complain because it was too easy and now he was bored.

Self-fulfilling prophecy, perhaps?

 

[Pumabear8]

I fall on the side of FAR too much! .. Every day I see people complaining they are not making Billions in 20 mins (OK that's an exaggeration) .. but to see people moan that making a million in ten mins is "an Insult" is bizarre for me, an old Elite fan. Elite has always been about the long haul, Progression and the journey, now all I am hearing is "It's all a grind"

The progression is so messed up that in 1 hour you can move from a sidewinder to a far more capable ship .. and still i see people saying it's too slow!
I can't be the only one who remembers the joy of getting military lasers or that energy bomb and feeling that I had achieved something. I feel that credits are far too easy to come by now that the game is losing it's original identity as a long haul game.

FD please don't increase the progression speed anymore, I bet a lot of players have never seen the inside of a Hauler.
I get that people want things quickly, but that has never been Elites way.

I've done exploration, I've done CG's, I've attempted to get more deeply into this game, but in the end, there is only credits and ships, when I played games like Mass Effect, I rarely watched my credit balance as I was too busy being distracted by the narrative, before I knew it, I had the credits for the next upgrade, not so with this game, the slog to the next upgrade is notable, even more so when the payouts are low.

Do I want 10 million per minute? no, I'll be happy to take 10 million a week so long as there was something interesting to do while earning it, and currently, that is not the case.


In short, too low.