Earning/Rewards in the game - Does it need a solid rework, or is it just too late now?

[Delilah]

I've had this thought numerous times, and I'm of course not alone as many threads on this and related topics come up over and over - How should the game be rewarding activites, and is it currently doing so in a logical/productive way at the moment?


This hit me again last night during the livestream where it covered the new Megaship gameplay assets. The notion is Wings of you will go to these and undertake a heist to - for example - extract the cargo from its hold. So a group of you do this. Get bounties. Get damaged. Risk increasing your Notoriety? Risk destruction? All for a dozen tons of some cargo?

And in another thread we have of course have discussions where super safe trade or passenger gameplay can give 100-200mCRs per hour.

An in another thread we have traders, making millions an hour, complaining about PvP Pirates stealing a few tens of thousands of CR of this cargo from them, not in thruth even covering their costs, let alone the game offering a method to make a real profit.


It hits me we have a growing issue (as more gameplay elements come online) that the risk/reward and time/effort reward is getting more and more skewed on a CR reward basis. Of course it's not all down to CRs, as many people do what they do for enjoyment. But, it's rather frustrating surely if you undertake a more complex or risky path, that you then get a laughable payout at the end of it? eg: Four of you raid a Megaship, and the 10t of cargo you then divide up between you doesn't even pay for your repairs, let alone your bountys.

Would it be nice to see FD sit down and try and address some of this? Or is it simply too late or not important enough (now)?

You raise an excellent question. And I agree with Agony that its out of wack and unlikely to change anytime soon. I think the best one can hope for is competition breaking Frontier's current monopoly on the market, some resignations in high places, and a fresh rethink.

Alternatively, we could be waiting for microtransactions of a larger order. Agony disagrees, but Tencent did not invest in Frontier for nothing.

 

[NeilF]

There are players out there with billion-credit Cutters who want to fight them. They don't want to spend long hours grinding out 50 million credit rebuys. If they're forced to they'll likely just get bored and quit the game entirely.

Well, there's ways around your first point. I've suggested the game offers zones/arenas where anything goes and rebuys are covered to a huge degree. ie: Premise being TV entertainment.

It's even more basic than that. Trade is irrelevant NOW due to the high payments of delivery missions. The trade tools are great, but there's no reason to "buy low and sell high" when instead you can "pick up and drop off" for more money. Wing missions aren't going to make much of a difference because the problem is already there.

The only way for regular freeform activities to be worthwhile is if there's a massive across the board reduction in mission payouts.

Yes, the fact you can earn 100-200m in an Anaconda per hour delivering warm cargo (passengers) does make you wonder why you'd deliver regular cargo for a tenth of that?

 

[Dommarraa]

Took me 3 years to earn 4 BCr in entirely legitimate game play (apart maybe 200Mcr from Poop hauling which was a tad silly)

My Inara stats for the last 7 days is : CREDIT GAIN:+ 1,993,018,819. I have not fired a shot or taken any damage whatsoever

So yes, some balancing seems sort of sensible

(NB Dont want or need the cash, just gone for the Scrooge McDuck badge from EDSM)

 

[Delilah]

It's even more basic than that. Trade is irrelevant NOW due to the high payments of delivery missions. The trade tools are great, but there's no reason to "buy low and sell high" when instead you can "pick up and drop off" for more money. Wing missions aren't going to make much of a difference because the problem is already there.

The only way for regular freeform activities to be worthwhile is if there's a massive across the board reduction in mission payouts.

The other way is massive across the board increases in non-passenger mission payouts. Or a reboot of the mission and trade system with many more missions and profit in mind. I'm sure there are other, player friendly ways.

Let's not excuse Frontier's time, credit, and reputation gating. It does no good for casual and new players. Early adopters like many of us have many billions, but other will never have the resources to play in open, engage in pvp, take substantive risks, and the like.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Kind of both i would say.

It is too late, but even so, it could do with a good rework. And there are always new players coming in.

When you see doing an assassination that will take about 30 mins (due to waiting time) and you have to watch the clock and plan other activities, and still only get paid 500k while on the passenger mission board you see a non-wanted basic one way delivery for the same or even more, if you are thinking about quick credits its a no brainer. Salvage missions where you have to extract from other ships, meaning its not just simple kill but piracy required, which takes more skill, pay less than basic pew-pew missions.

Its basically all out of whack in terms of risk vs reward.

And then, if we bring the BGS into it, we have low risk stackable one way missions that give +++ INF, while the longer sightseeing missions where you have to spend up to an hour getting around give you just ++ INF (or is it just +?).

People actually wait on these? I take one, I go where it tells me, kill who it sends me to kill and turn it in. Is it different if you actually wait?

 

[Xanador]

Double post...sorry

 

[fuub]

This is THE main problem with ED.


I lost count the number of times I've logged in ED after months of not playing, check the mission board of a station where I have full rep with all faction, see missions offering 100k and just leave the game.


The lack of balance of the rewards make almost the entire game feel frustrating, and the left small part feel too op (the current exploits)



FD seems unable to fix this so I think it is too late now.

 

[z33r0x]

Rebalance the whole system, the game needs a complete reset when it comes to assets and credits, and also the unbalanced engineering rolls need to go, make it more fun to getting the materials, with no random spawn in the nodes, fixed materials that spawn on a planet on each of those nodes you destroy, but engineers who people have unlocked should remain, and also the ranks of every player that they have fixed, as soon as they have solved every abuse aspect of the game this would be a nice choice to reset the assets and also, this means that their ship goes with that, that would be a great thing to do, and letting people have explored those systems they have already, I know that many people who spend a lot of time flying around in the galaxy would be really angry if they lost that. Add a more rewarding, more fun system, make sure there are credit sinks in the game, cost of having multiple ships parked in stations and such, for every day a ship is parked at station, a fee will be added to that ship, once you want to use it, u have to pay that cost to retrive it, more expensive fuel make it feel that the credits you have, matter, and have value to them.

 

[Xanador]

Yes, but the Wing missions (eg: for trade) done in solo will require multiple runs? Instead of if four of you are doing it in one?

It depends, I may be able to do them in one or two runs in a cutter....

 

[Shanaeri]

Engineering materials are the new currency. Often in a game when one currency becomes problematic they introduce a new account bound one, that is limited in the amount you can store to replace it for new shiny items.

Credits cannot buy
Engineering experimental effects
Tech Broker Items
Synth items(including FSD boosts, Ammo recharges etc)
Engineering general.

 

[damon8r351]

I kind of like things the way it is, along with the changes coming down the road with Beyond. Rewards are adequate to me for the amount of risk. In fact, in some cases they're a bit excessive. But at least Donate Credits missions exist, so whenever I feel like I have too many credits I can flush them down the toilet with whichever faction of my choosing.

 

[StonedThoughts]

Hmm... first i have to agree that there realy could be a better balance of risk/reward but let me tell you a little story:

Im actually introducing a friend to the game and naturaly he came up with "How should i ever afford this?" after having a look at the Shipyard (only speaking of a Python ^^)
So i told him there will be enough opportunities to make a good amount of Credits pretty fast and that we can have a look at this when he get the basics.
A few days later now he is having a lot of fun in his A-Rated Conda COBRA!!! , running mission, doing bountys for the CG, scanning some systems and allready looking forward to a AspX just via "basic" stuff you do when you get used to the game.
So i just told him a few ways (no exploits though, talking bout passenger missions and stuff) to make some quick bucks and guess what he replied?
"Nah, 30min in SC sounds kinda boring and i can still do this if i realy need to. Lets do that CG thing you told me about and where can i get this FSD upgrade again?"

So here i am, escorting a mostly harmless Conda to Felicity, showing him what planets are worth to scan, where to get some materials for the rngineering and having a look that no filthy NPC-Pirate is trying to get his tasty meta-alloys while having a absoulut great time and fun playing the game without making any profit at all.
Needless to say for my mate there just isnt anything like grind at all at the moment.

So what i want to say here is quite simple:
Given the new mechanics offer some good/fun gameplay i dont see "profit" as the main reason to engage with them (at least in case of Credits, the oppurtunity to get some rare Mats or even new "blueprints" for the Techbroker would be kinda awesome though)
If i need some quick bucks there are more than enough ways to get them.

So like i said, i still think a better risk/reward system would be a good idea but, for me, its not even slightly as important as (new) ways to enjoy the game itself.

Now if you would excuse me, i need to find an unsuspicious way to lure a particular Cmdr to Hutton Orbital

Have a great weekend all
o7

 

[fuub]

Given the new mechanics offer some good/fun gameplay i dont see "profit" as the main reason to engage with them (at least in case of Credits, the oppurtunity to get some rare Mats or even new "blueprints" for the Techbroker would be kinda awesome though)
If i need some quick bucks there are more than enough ways to get them.

How much credits do you have?


I honestly feel people with more then 200 million credits shouldn't be allowed to contribute on the reward balancing discussion.

 

[Muetdhiver]

Megaship Piracy :

1) Why is there no wing missions for that that ask for the recovery of shady items for a very good reward ?
2) Why not put very expensive cargo there, to make it somewhat worth it. Like meta-alloys, thargoid probes, AI relics or low temp diamond. (I mean, instead of aluminium...)
3) Why not have the cargo bay also drop rare/very rare materials. Like pharma insulators or imperial shielding etc...

I would find it very sad if FD has 1) Wing missions 2) New PvE piracy mechanics and in the end don't make the two work together to provide
challenging wing PvE piracy with a decent reward (via the mission reward).

Really FDev. Please...

 

[Weps]

The whole economy is out of whack, but there's no reason to cry over spilt milk. There's always room for improvement, unless the developer intends to turn off the lights (and there also a different discussion about weather there is any incentive to even take improvements into consideration, since from their point of view it's not like the state of the in-game economy is driving any new sales...).

Personally I'd like to see two things:

- a self regulatory mechanism for rewards. The game already tracks different types of income sources (combat, trading, exploration etc.). Simply run a statistic periodically on the server, based on sample information from players about the sources of their credits and automatically adjust several index values which can be used as multipliers for credit rewards. That's a gross summary of it, but the intention would be simulate supply and demand of services across the galaxy - for example if every player in the game would suddenly decide to run a passenger liner, the rewards for passenger missions would go down, since there is always that 'other' taxi parked at the next landing pad. Multipliers can be worked in practically anywhere, mission rewards, commodity prices, bounties.

- more money sinks for the filthy rich. Hopefully they take it into consideration with Squadrons.

 

[Darkfyre99]

I'd say it's both too late and in desperate need of a rework.

I see way too many missions, not even passenger missions, where my reaction to the reward being offered is: "You could buy your own ship for that much!" I mean that literally: the minimum required capital to complete the mission is less than what the reward for the mission is. I know players expect a Return On Investment, but a ROI of 200% on a single mission is a bit excessive, IMO.'

Unfortunately, the standard has now been set that ridiculously huge rewards are now the norm, so I doubt this will change anytime soon.

 

[Kaocraft]

Well, there's ways around your first point. I've suggested the game offers zones/arenas where anything goes and rebuys are covered to a huge degree. ie: Premise being TV entertainment.



Yes, the fact you can earn 100-200m in an Anaconda per hour delivering warm cargo (passengers) does make you wonder why you'd deliver regular cargo for a tenth of that?

Yeah there's that. But I wasn't even necessarily thinking of passenger missions. Plain old Cargo delivery missions don't pay as much as passengers, but they still pay enough that there's no possible reason for you to ever try out the trade tools and build your own trade route, because the best case possible outcome will still be worse than just picking up schlepping missions.

 

[Sylveria]

People actually wait on these? I take one, I go where it tells me, kill who it sends me to kill and turn it in. Is it different if you actually wait?

I think Agony's referring to the random nature of appearance of the target (waiting time) rather than an established period of time. Sometimes it takes a while before the target appears, isn't always instant.

As to the OT... I'm of the belief that there's a complete overhaul of rewards for all types of missions needed, but as to whether it's "too late" or not, who can say? If people leave the game because they're tired of waiting for changes, who's to say the game won't gain more players when it is changed? (it's all speculation)

That said, I also play the game to enjoy playing the game, it doesn't become a second "job" for me. I don't feel an urge or need to min/max, nor do I feel a need to watch the clock as I take missions or haul cargo to see how many credits/hour I'm doing. If I feel like hauling some cargo, I go in and pick a mission, and do it. If I feel like wandering the universe for a while scanning planets, I hop in a ship, fit it for exploration and do it. If I feel like some combat, I'll pick up a mission, and go do it. Or I'll go to a spot, look for some criminals with bounties, and pew pew them. This is of course, my own personal play style, and YMMV.

 

[_trent_]

I'm expecting 3.0 to introduce more content that credits cannot buy. The tech broker on last night's livestream needs materials to unlock and I'm expecting more of the same with other new features.

It also wouldn't surprise me at all if there were new types of material and data introduced in 3.0 which will mean that in terms of certain features, all players will start with the same clean slate.

 

[Crank Larson]

Earnings/rewards are not important overall - they are not what brings me to play the game. FD don't need to spend any significant time looking into that side of things at all, there are far more interesting things they can get on with.

In E: D, as in life, things are not equal. And I've no idea why people keep thinking they should be.