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

[NW3]

There seems to be this persistent myth in the game that you can only succeed in any endeavour if you have the biggest ship in the game.

I have no real desire to own one of the big three, hell the biggest I 'might' end up buying is a Python or Clipper and even then I am having a hard time convincing myself that I need one.

But so many think they can only enjoy the game if they have the biggest, baddest ship without any thought on if it dovetails into their playing style. I wonder how many new players trolled the forums to find the current exploit and jumped from a Cobra to an Anaconda then realised they had no idea how to fly something that big, that they couldn't land everywhere and then discovered they had missed half the things to do because they were that focused on the exploit and the dreams of power and domination in the Anaconda. Add to the regular posts of players complaining they bought some mega ship, but can't afford the rebuy or didn't realise how expensive it is to kit out!

I like the slow progression, I like to earn that next level, it makes whatever you did to get there worthwhile.

Yes, and that's why rewards can be "too high". In this game, much of the actual content is the ships. New players often think they must get in an Anaconda to have fun, but nothing could be further from the truth, imo. Skipping over the early ships is just cheating yourself out of much of the fun and enjoyment there is in this game. Personally, I hate the Anaconda: It's slow, can't land at outposts, and the cockpit view is quite restricted. If you can't have fun in an Eagle or a Cobra, it's unlikely you'll have fun in an Anaconda.

3 weeks ago I was down to my last Cr100m. I now have Cr1bn again.

People aren't saying you don't need more opportunities because they're trying to stop you progressing.
They're saying it because you already have the means to progress.

Exactly. Don't focus on the exploits. Learn to play the game as it was intended.

From FDev's end 'reward' will be considered as averaged out across a number of/all activities, not held to an average across every activity. If you expect players to change activity often, it's not necessary for each of these activities to be at the same reward level or even close to it.

I get it, to some extent. While I do a wide variety of things, there are two or three activities I detest and if reward were much higher in those than in my own activities, it'd be annoying.

The thing is, when some activities pay a lot more than others, players tend to stick to those activities and then complain that the game is boring, because they only do the same activity over-and-over. If payouts were more balanced, I think we'd see less of that. If the repeated activity was an exploit, of course there will be complaints when it's fixed "nerfed". I think that's what triggers comments like 1 million credits per 10 minutes is too low to be worthwhile.

-Reward being too *high*...I can't really begin to touch that. Too high for who? For what? There's no endgame. Eventually, you'll have more money than you have things to do with it.

FDev are who I leave that to. If they have a progression rate in mind they've never stated it afaik. Without that statement I don't understand what too high reward would even mean.

True, there's no endgame and not anything new to do, once you get the "big 3" ships. That's why you shouldn't rush to get there. Most of the fun is in the journey, not the destination. That's why I try to convince people to slow down and enjoy the game.

I think many of the "old timers" do have "a progression rate in mind", which leads to comments like the "rewards are too high". Skipping over the early ships will likely just lead to dissatisfaction with the game, because you skipped over the best parts.

 

[Quantis Trap]

It's interesting to me that most of the people saying they can't make enough money in the game don't want to play the game much before they get all the rewards in the game. The same people will turn around and call the game boring when they didn't even spend the time to know the game.

There are currently at least two other threads like this one: "The Trail I Want to Blaze" and "The Biggest Request of 2.3 or 2.4: Please let us make money."

For those who want to spend any time at all getting to know this game, it is easy to make the credits. I'll argue that it's much easier than it was and much easier than it should be, at this point to get, to the first large ship. As a result, the game is starting to attract gamers who are used to games that give them nearly everything up front and will still complain that its current pace of completion to be too slow. The only end result of this slide toward instant gratification would kill this game. I know that's not where Frontier will let the game go, so I'm not worried.

 

[Redomus]

Been lurking watching the usual suspects say how easy it is to do x or y and they made a billion in two weeks but have yet to see a suggestion on how this can be done. If it requires a big ship first then this is the wrong answer as I would assume it's a factor of multiples.

Are we talking about this road to riches business?

I for one was a bit bummed by the massacre stack need as I earn my money via combat - significant risk for meager pay. I still do them but you are looking at at least 2-4 hours for a mission. More times than not I've been saved by learning faoff tumbling to save my thrusters on <10% hull. (Medium ship)

I've taken to blowing up bases, pay isn't super for skimmer bashing vs risk on some bases but it's fun to try. Genuine advice from the wealthy is what is needed over gloating how easy it is for you. I see far too much of it here imo.

Lack of credits does hamper a lot of things in game from what I have experienced so far. The pace/hr is a little low at times. Only gets worse the fewer real-time hours you can put in.

 

[Mrat13]

Been lurking watching the usual suspects say how easy it is to do x or y and they made a billion in two weeks but have yet to see a suggestion on how this can be done. If it requires a big ship first then this is the wrong answer as I would assume it's a factor of multiples.

Are we talking about this road to riches business?

I for one was a bit bummed by the massacre stack need as I earn my money via combat - significant risk for meager pay. I still do them but you are looking at at least 2-4 hours for a mission. More times than not I've been saved by learning faoff tumbling to save my thrusters on <10% hull. (Medium ship)

I've taken to blowing up bases, pay isn't super for skimmer bashing vs risk on some bases but it's fun to try. Genuine advice from the wealthy is what is needed over gloating how easy it is for you. I see far too much of it here imo.

Lack of credits does hamper a lot of things in game from what I have experienced so far. The pace/hr is a little low at times. Only gets worse the fewer real-time hours you can put in.

I think your talking about doing Rhea in an Anaconda. It is silly to point to that ship to do the missions in, when a cheap and cheerful type 7 will have nearly as much success, but at five times cheaper.

Can't help but laugh at how the people who want to make cash fast shoot themselves in the foot before they've even started their first run.

I think their just needs to be a balance to cater to normal people who play the game as a game, not as a second job, mainly because they have a life. But not too easy, because then money would be worthless and you wouldn't want money to be worthless in a game you use money in, right? Something to do with economics, I don't know.

Sadly, some people haven't heard of a thing called 'balance', and believe the world revolves around them and their ideas, which is why we are on the brink of an ideas war it seems.

Sorry about that last part, but real life is seeping into my game I use as escapism, and that shouldn't happen, should it?

Can we all try to find a compromise?....

Please?.....

 

[NW3]

It's interesting to me that most of the people saying they can't make enough money in the game don't want to play the game much before they get all the rewards in the game. The same people will turn around and call the game boring when they didn't even spend the time to know the game.

For those who want to spend any time at all getting to know this game, it is easy to make the credits. I'll argue that it's much easier than it was and much easier than it should be, at this point to get, to the first large ship. As a result, the game is starting to attract gamers who are used to games that give them nearly everything up front and will still complain that its current pace of completion to be too slow. The only end result of this slide toward instant gratification would kill this game.

^ Exactly. Rep++

 

[CMDR Endincite]

Been lurking watching the usual suspects say how easy it is to do x or y and they made a billion in two weeks but have yet to see a suggestion on how this can be done. If it requires a big ship first then this is the wrong answer as I would assume it's a factor of multiples.

Hardly relevant since the OP's post is not asking how, but for my part I'll answer.
The first time around I made my first 100mil trading (i was only going for an A-spec Clipper at the time). At the time that was about half the rate it is now (>4800/ton for an A-B-A route is common just now). Today for best rates it usually revolves around the Torval control systems that sell ISlaves at a sharply reduced rate. Simply selling medicines in outbreak systems will net you 3000 1-way, and you can usually grab something to return with for another 1000. People post routes on Reddit and such, and while these will get hammered pretty quickly, they at least let you see what makes a top-end route. Actual cr/hr depends entirely on what you're flying and how quickly you can run the route.

This time around I got to 20mil with random missions and a CG. After that I decided on what I wanted - costing about 100mil - I went about pushing toward that with passenger missions (this was just a couple days ago, for reference). I wanted to do this in the simplest way possible (I have a chosen activity I want to focus on for this account), so I flew out to systems near Medb (1.5 million LS to dock) and started hopping boards/stations to fill my 32 (2x 5E) economy cabins. As it turned out I could usually fill up these with 3 missions averaging 6 million each, plus whatever data courier missions came up for around 500-700k each. 4 x 40 minute SC trips and ~80 mil later, I'm there and no longer concerned about moving forward. Note: it doesn't actually matter which system near Medb. Provided it's within 15ly it can send passenger missions there. Having multiple stations to check boards, low-ls distances, these things are useful but it's worthwhile to jump around to different systems nearby if you find things drying up.

Edit: the latter method & rate, which I suspect is the only one close to fast enough for you, requires only something large enough to hold 32 economy cabins in whatever configuration. Pretty small ship, though not the smallest. Bigger = more per trip, but a longer time hunting the right missions.

 

[Red Anders]

Time is a factor... that concept is fast becoming a dirty phrase on here. But its true.

I've made over 100m credits in around two and a half hour's gameplay this weekend. Not at Rhea (or wherever the current reddit thread on how to make money whilst boring yourself stupid directs people) either. I don't spend much of my game time actively pursuing credits, mainly because I don't need to, but that's far from an unusual level of income when I do.

Frankly if people can't find a couple of hours a week to play then yes, they probably have made a poor purchasing decision. If they can find a couple of hours, the most significant barrier to them not making that kind of money is the fact that they believe they can't and that they can't or won't apply some time to devising ways to do it.

I get really tired of reading people talking as if the only people who have a decent bank balance in this game are those who have torn the butt out of various exploits, partly because it's somewhat insulting to those of us who haven't, but mainly because with that attitude it becomes a self-fulfiling prophecy.

 

[Redomus]

Thanks for the insight, just trying to break the cycle of yes/no and I can but it's a secret circle. Seems like trade is a decent consistent way. Maybe it might help direct where the troughs are in the different aspects of the game rather than a pointless circular argument.

 

[yolomcbobbinz]

Making X amount is fine as it is, I feel the problem is there's not a fun way of doing it. Yea if you do what you like to do you can have some fun but in most cases it's short lived and moderate lengths between them.


You said most people probably hasn't seen the cockpit of a hauler, I feel sorry for them. Hauler is a terrific starter for exploration, until you can afford an asp

 

[CMDR Endincite]

Thanks for the insight, just trying to break the cycle of yes/no and I can but it's a secret circle. Seems like trade is a decent consistent way. Maybe it might help direct where the troughs are in the different aspects of the game rather than a pointless circular argument.

Trade is troublesome to tell people about because
a) it really does scale with ship size directly. Yes you can break 15mil/hr quite easily in a Cutter, but in something as small or smaller (in cargo space) than an AspX you'd likely make more doing just about anything else.
b) Telling early players about a route openly will generally lead 50 Cutters your way, temporarily exhausting the supply or demand regeneration rate of the markets involved.

For other things, the only reason it should be secret is if you feel it's unintended or otherwise likely to be nerfed - and some people have a fear that this could be just anything. Rhea's absurdity was unintended, but the bonus for LS distance wasn't, so extremely high LS-distance places like Medb or Alpha Centauri (Hutton) will likely remain as they are. The rate isn't insane and the time investment isn't trivial.

For reference you'd likely find a more open question-asking environment where actual Devs are not likely reading - there's numerous subcommunities on Discord and other platforms. I'm not personally concerned, but many have quite the "once-bitten" syndrome about things being mentioned and then promptly nerfed. It is what it is, I guess.

 

[Mrat13]

Trade is troublesome to tell people about because
a) it really does scale with ship size directly. Yes you can break 15mil/hr quite easily in a Cutter, but in something as small or smaller (in cargo space) than an AspX you'd likely make more doing just about anything else.
b) Telling early players about a route will generally lead 50 Cutters your way, temporarily exhausting the supply or demand regeneration rate of the markets involved.

See that's why you find a route that contains a medium pad, then the cutters can't reach you. Even better if it has two medium pads, but that's rare.

Although then some people might be smart and bring a swarm of pythons......

But anyway, that's why I stick to medium pads.

 

[CMDR Endincite]

See that's why you find a route that contains a medium pad, then the cutters can't reach you. Even better if it has two medium pads, but that's rare.

Although then some people might be smart and bring a swarm of pythons......

But anyway, that's why I stick to medium pads.

Indeed. I know for a long while you could get genuinely better returns selling at outposts - say 3500/ton A-B-A vs. 2800-3000, pretty near tops at the time - but I have no idea if this is true anymore. In any case, you're far less likely to find your route trashed tomorrow.
But yeah, I shared routes anyway. I shared a 100-stop circuit lol. There are supplies and demands in the game whose replenishment rate (a function of their maximum size) is beyond what can be really trashed by even heavy Cutter traffic.

 

[Stealthie]

Frankly if people can't find a couple of hours a week to play then yes, they probably have made a poor purchasing decision. If they can find a couple of hours, the most significant barrier to them not making that kind of money is the fact that they believe they can't and that they can't or won't apply some time to devising ways to do it.

Awhatnow?

Surely you're not suggesting that people who spend time on a thing should progress more than those who don't?

That's just crazy talk.

Only last week I took a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle back to the shop and complained because I couldn't complete it in the 15 minutes I'd set aside for it. [mad]

 

[relayer]

I get really tired of reading people talking as if the only people who have a decent bank balance in this game are those who have torn the butt out of various exploits

I agree with the above. Yeah, it took me time to get my assets, but isn't that the way with most video games? You start out raw and penniless with a cracked sword and a leather shield, or a baseball bat or a shotgun, and work your way up to Supreme Warrior or Exalted Wizard or Team Commander or whatever with huge sparklies.

After you get "all teh things" in E : D, you're only at the starting point of another level.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

If I'm not mistaken, for those longing for the good old days, of walking to school, up hill, both ways, through the snow, in a blizzard, with nothing more to cover their feet than the cardboard they traded some homeless guy their last pack of matches for, and then had to eat that cardboard for lunch, and were grateful to have that, I believe the original Elite can be downloaded from the Frontier site. Simply fire it up, enjoy your lost glory days, and quit [expletive]ing [expletive]ing.

Just because you CAN do something like skip from a Sidewinder to Cobra to an Anaconda doesn't mean you should.
Of course, it also doesn't mean you shouldn't.

That's what "Play Your Way" means. It doesn't mean "play the way I use to, 30 years ago" when games came on cassette tapes and social networking meant "go outside and play".

 

[relayer]

Making X amount is fine as it is, I feel the problem is there's not a fun way of doing it.

I don't know of a single modern game that I did not have to chop wood, gather materials, craft experiments and collect cheap weapons to sell for pennies at a market [ie grind] to afford a decent shield or boots or whatever.

If I had to figure out how many times I killed Meph (Diablo) just for a chance at a semi-OK weapon, I would probably vomit.

 

[Mrat13]

Indeed. I know for a long while you could get genuinely better returns selling at outposts - say 3500/ton A-B-A vs. 2800-3000, pretty near tops at the time - but I have no idea if this is true anymore. In any case, you're far less likely to find your route trashed tomorrow.
But yeah, I shared routes anyway. I shared a 100-stop circuit lol. There are supplies and demands in the game whose replenishment rate (a function of their maximum size) is beyond what can be really trashed by even heavy Cutter traffic.

About the same on Eddb.io without imp slaves at 3k. With imp slaves, it's 4k at a large pad, and 5k at a medium pad. Probably could find better on your own however.

And even at the same rate, as you say your using a safer route on a medium pad, so it's risk vs reward at that point.

 

[relayer]

If I'm not mistaken, for those longing for the good old days, of walking to school, up hill, both ways, through the snow, in a blizzard, with nothing more to cover their feet than the cardboard they traded some homeless guy their last pack of matches for, and then had to eat that cardboard for lunch, and were grateful to have that

You forgot the part about the wolves.

 

[Redomus]

Awhatnow?

Surely you're not suggesting that people who spend time on a thing should progress more than those who don't?

That's just crazy talk.

Only last week I took a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle back to the shop and complained because I couldn't complete it in the 15 minutes I'd set aside for it. [mad]

You are missing the point. Trade seems for the most part consistent with earning. Other areas aren't. So if people have 1 hour a week they earn more or less 1/7 of what a 7 day 1 hour would be. Scaled per ship size of course.

Not all activities have this consistency nor do they have the same risk/reward. Not everything should be the same but it's worth discussing over your unhelpful post.

It should be rewarding to scale. I could never earn 15m/hr in a conflict zone despite my best efforts. In fact it's a rate significantly lower than this because of the time it takes. This is where the balancing comes in - perhaps not everyone likes to trade/explore etc.

I don't like the fact that a vocal few seem to want to crush the enjoyment out of npe's if you want this game to grow.

 

[Stealthie]

See that's why you find a route that contains a medium pad, then the cutters can't reach you. Even better if it has two medium pads, but that's rare.

Although then some people might be smart and bring a swarm of pythons......

But anyway, that's why I stick to medium pads.

I seem to recall that some of the cheapest places to buy the most profitable commodities in the game are platforms which only have medium pads.

I know trading can sound cryptic to people who just want to be told "Go to X, buy y and then take it to Z and sell it" but there's really no secret to it.
It's just a case of using EDDB to find cheap sources of stuff, places where it can be sold for maximum profit and then deciding if the distance between those two places is reasonable.

I also recall, for example, that one of the cheapest places (possibly the cheapest place) to buy gold is only about 20-odd Ly from the place where it fetches the highest price in the game.
That kind of thing isn't some "big secret". It's just the result of 2 minutes playing with EDDB.