Balance, Balance, Balance

[encrypted]

With all new announcements, streams and content that is coming in 2018, I think, it's safe to say the majority of community is welcoming what FDEV is doing to the game this year. How it will be done exactly - again, time will tell, but overall the feeling right now is pretty positive.

However, I do think, than except Combat Logging, P2P, lack of in-game tools and some placeholder stuff we're still having since 2014 one of the most important things that we need to discuss is BALANCE.

It will be almost impossible to balance it all out completely (especially with even new bunch of new weapons and modules introduced, engineering, etc) but lets leave modules/ships/weapons balance aside. I think it's safe to say that overall FDEV does that balance perfectly.

Here I'd rather like to talk today about income/expense gameplay balance in general.

Income

Earning money in Elite is way to easy now. Many could disagree, and I do completely understand where FDEV and playerbase is coming from - it's a game, and have fun factor should be #1. After all, no one wants elite anacondas for 40K bounty, heh as we used to have in Elite 1.0?

But FDEV, IMO, should revisit all activities in a game and make them more or less equal in a matter of money earning opportunities with exclusion of riskier stuff like some riskier missions that should give more income. Passenger missions especially need another pass - I feel like long-distance ones are ok, but local missions need adjusting. Mining. Exploration is quite fine as it's now I think. CQC probably needs bigger rewards. Search and rescue, etc.

Overall balance is hard to achieve, but I really wish FD would tweak general activities more often, not once in few years as it seems now.

Fuel

I really think fuel costs are unfortunately, laughable. I do remember times when re-fueling your ship actually meant something. I think shortly after release FD did 'ease up' fuel burden on players, which was quite understandable, but they did forget to raise it up after all missions, bounties, etc. increases occurred during last 3 years.

One of the most constant expenses in the game, fuel shouldn't cost crazy money, but now it's simply a joke. Few thousand credits at the most. Cost of fuel should go up at least few times, so sometimes people could really consider fuel scoops as money saving module. Now it's just necessity for explorers or for ships who like to travel far.

Again, if military installations, prison colonies, remote outposts would have x2, x4, x6 fuel prices (as some remote places in real life) - that would make totally perfect sense and would add up to the game immensely. Cheapest fuel - on refineries and places where fuel is harvested and quite populated systems, most expensive fuel - military, remote, prison places.

Also, if fuel price would fluctuate globally slightly, that would make total sense and would make game more interesting. Change global fuel prices with server ticks on Thursdays... Why not?

This changes with fuel prices, imo, are not that hard to do, and I would love that FDEV would consider it.


Repairs

Repair prices are tiny comparing to ship costs. Commander should feel that extra layer of 'fear' when shields are down. I remember the times when repairs were meaningful. 0% hull and almost 0% modules repair should be ... some significant fraction of ship cost. I'm not saying 50%, but not as small as it is now. Again, some consideration here is needed, but that fraction should be increased in comparison to what it is now in at least 3-4 times.

Repair cost shouldn't bite or be the end of the world after each fight, but it should be meaningful.


Bounties and Fines

This is so funny we can't even discuss this. 200cr for 'loitering' I think and 6000 credits for a murder....

Seriously? I'll take one passenger then for a 5 minute trip to pay for 100s of murders after, thanks.

This should be greatly increased. Also, those fines could slightly differ, based on jurisdiction, etc.


Trade

Trade, as Steve said last stream is a heart of Elite Dangerous. Personally, I would love trade to be the most profitable thing in a game, but it would be impossible to balance now with all those crazy mission payouts, exploits, etc.

But we should consider to buff it somehow so most lucrative trade routes could be on par on what can be earned with missions.

Otherwise trade will forever stay safe 'beginner player' career.

Elite players with huge fleets should be interested in trading too. We need to do something about it.


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Summarizing, I would say this: a lot of stuff in ED got buffs, but not too much stuff got similar equal buffs. Ways to 'loose money' in ED should be increased in both quantity and overall value (fuel, repairs, etc.) in order to make game more dangerous, meaningful and make sense in general. I am not talking about player punishment, but about overall sense of the game.

Right now Elite is like a stock market where you gain 300%-500% every day which makes, honestly, no sense. Income/expense ratio is not-healthy, IMHO.

Lets even that a little.

Your thoughts?

 

[iFred]

All your points are invalid.

A game like elite needs a clear progress line, not a fully balanced system. Playing time and deep understanding of the game should give you progress and a clear advantage over other players.

if you want balance, play chess. My opinion.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Some good points, but its a tricky thing to get right. Too high costs, people complain that certain activities cost too much to bother with and then need increased payouts. Payouts are increased and then that makes costs less relevant.

Increasing repair costs can kill hull tanks as a viable strategy. It did kill them when they were high.

There are always knock on effects of these things.

Besides, whille 100 million per hour runs are possible, not everyone takes advantage of them.

Before any changes like you propose are done, FD really need to sort out the whole risk/reward business with missions and other activities. 100 million per hour for zero risk compared to (for example) an Elite ranked retrieval mission where you need to extract goods from targets, that gets you wanted, and can take well over 30 mins, and pays out peanuts in comparison.... something is messed up with that.

 

[encrypted]

Before any changes like you propose are done, FD really need to sort out the whole risk/reward business with missions and other activities. 100 million per hour for zero risk compared to (for example) an Elite ranked retrieval mission where you need to extract goods from targets, that gets you wanted, and can take well over 30 mins, and pays out peanuts in comparison.... something is messed up with that.

Of course, forgot to mention that. First - balance on missions, so riskier, time-consuming and especially illegal missions should be much more rewarded in comparison than now... Again why would I want to get that 'wetwork' done if I can travel with a passenger for 2x money?

Playing time and deep understanding of the game should give you progress and a clear advantage over other players

Passenger missions are golden mine now. Is this knowledge is advantage over other players?

Do you agree that income/expense ratio in Elite is unhealthy?

 

[Julio Montega]

We have engineers, we have hitpoint modules,
we have bulk transportation compared to raw material aquisition,
trading, exploring, legal murder (bounties) and theft.

There can be no balance with all those aspects in the game,
because PAYOUT is the wrong way to balance a game.
In fact a perfect balance would even make the game more meaningless,
it needs to add stuff that motivates and make use of reputation
and military rank, before going for hard cash again.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

But FDEV, IMO, should revisit all activities in a game and make them more or less equal in a matter of money earning opportunities with exclusion of riskier stuff like some riskier missions that should give more income.

That certainly sounds like a reasonable goal, but it can't be done without major (as in "different game" major) redevelopments of the core professions.

Trading: with a few exceptions like rares trading, or if there's a good trade route involving an outpost, bigger is better. Your profit is approximately proportional to the size of your cargo hold
Combat: bigger usually helps up to a point, but especially with the ridiculous boosts engineering gives, a FAS and a Corvette will both kill targets faster than they arrive in a RES. Even a Sidewinder can earn lots in a High RES just by hanging around and helping the cops finish off targets on their last few hull %.
Exploration: A Sidewinder can make as much money as any other ship (though there are reasons to use other ships for non-financial benefits)

So where do you balance? If you balance so that trading and exploration make a similar amount of money in a Sidewinder, then anyone flying a Cobra (never mind an Asp or Anaconda) is going to be making far more from trade than exploration. On the other hand, if you balance it for an Anaconda, new players in Sidewinders will be able to make massive amounts of cash from exploration compared with what they'd make from trading.

 

[CMDR Redcrest]

Ship's are well balanced:
If you put a Clipper on one side of a see-saw it will balance with an Anaconda!
Hull mass of certain ships needs looking at I reckon. Make the Clipper 100t lighter!

 

[krylite]

It's too late. They let credit inflation go out of control during some periods throughout the history of the game since game release. Now too many players want to buy and fully engr a cutter or corvette a few weeks from start. Because they see too many others flaunting the big ships now everyone wants them too. And then too many after having done all that with the various shortcuts complain the game is now too boring, powerplay is a joke (probably because serious involvement takes time and not on par with the easy ways to get credits.) then put a bad review on steam then move on or linger on the forums to continue to say how uninspired the game is, etc. I'd agree it's too out of whack compared to other MMO's defined and stringent policies, which would never let anyone get to level 100 abilities and respective game wealth in a few hundred hours when it took other players ten thousands of hours to reach that same level.

 

[iFred]

Do you agree that income/expense ratio in Elite is unhealthy?

Unhealthy for what / who? What are you really doing with money in the game? Do we have credit sinks except PvP? No. Until there´s nothing to do with money, no balancing is needed. We still have to work for ranks, ships, exploration data, engineers and so on.

It would be a total different story when we had to maintain stations, finance squads, have a running economy etc. - but it looks like that is either far off or never be the case. So no - credits are useless after you got your first billion, and even that needed only a couple of days back in gamma / shortly after release and nowadays it can be done in 25 hours.

But Elite has other problems that should be adressed with higher priority.

 

[Poseidal]

All small combat ships (actually probably all small ships in general) are just far too slow compared to their medium kin.

 

[encrypted]

Unhealthy for what / who? What are you really doing with money in the game? Do we have credit sinks except PvP? No.

To me. As everything else, it's subjective. There's simply not too much expense to anything, especially criminal stuff / fines are tiny compared to a single mission. Fuel costs, etc. I mentioned everything in a main post.

There's nothing to spend money on except rebuys/buying new ships which kinda eliminates money 'worth' feeling at all. You can do whatever - you know you can earn few millions easy and too fast and they won't disappear anywhere.

When I started playing I was really enjoying every 100k earned and didn't even think about combat for a few months. When I hit ASP on a boost on a station wall I actually felt something - rebuy was worth few trade trips and it was sensible. Everyone's path is different of course, but I personally would like that feeling of credits worth something back. Right now credits are virtually too easy, too fast and too many. As noone would agree to some cuts to incomes, I suggest to balance/add some expenses.

 

[Shadowed]

Why should fuel be expensive in Elite? It is basically a renewable resource with billions of years of availability.

Repairs are expensive imo. If someone rails my modules on my Cutter, each one will cost several million cr to repair!

I no longer see credit balance as progress. Engineering is now true progress with Navy rank as a side quest.

 

[NeilF]

Interesting. I posted this yesterday - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...eed-a-solid-rework-or-is-it-just-too-late-now

 

[IndigoWyrd]

All your points are invalid.

A game like elite needs a clear progress line, not a fully balanced system. Playing time and deep understanding of the game should give you progress and a clear advantage over other players.

if you want balance, play chess. My opinion.

Elite Progress:

Do You Suck as Much Today as You Did Yesterday?

Yes ---> You have not progressed. Play harder.

No ---> You have progressed. Play Smarter.

 

[dm0815]

So basically make everything more expensive while potentially lowering credit rewards?


How about scaling the module and ship prizes as well? Let's ignore the quick money schemes for a second here.


Back in the days I've found that reaching and A-grading an Asp Explorer was fun and provided a good progression curve. Buying and A-grading a Python was already dodgy. Buying anything beyond that... ugh... I think I would have burned out long before I've even had a chance at buying an Anaconda. Nevermind earning the credits for modules.


Have a look at the prize for Reactive Surface Composite bulkheads for a Cutter, just for fun. That's 492.541.000 credits (coriolis.io). That's like 2,46 Cutters. Who came up with this insanity? Did the dev in charge develop the scaling algorithm based on the Sidewinder and called it a day?


Elite just doesn't offer the gameplay to sustain that amount of repetition required to buy any of the (supposed) late game stuff. So to me it is not a surprise that players seek ways to earn as many credits as quickly as possible.

 

[jasonbirder]

So basically make everything more expensive while potentially lowering credit rewards?

Sounds good to me...anything to prevent people popping into an Anaconda/Cutter/Corvette after a couple of Hundred Hours...then being able to instantly rebuy one the moment its lost....

 

[Dbrn47]

.anything to prevent people popping into an Anaconda/Cutter/Corvette after a couple of Hundred Hours...then being able to instantly rebuy one the moment its lost....

And just how many hundreds of hours should it take? 500? 800? 2000? Who gets to decide exactly how long it takes? You know, even as is, it took me until sometime last year to get an Anaconda and then some to get into the Cutter mostly playing without taking too much advantage of the big credit earners. You are free to take your time, you know? What is it to you to prevent other people from making progression at whatever rate they make it? "Now now Jonny, Billy isn't quite as dedicated or fast as you so we're going to need you to slow down so its fair to everyone." What you seem to be saying is, unless the journey to the big ships is grueling then it isn't balanced, is that right?

 

[jasonbirder]

unless the journey to the big ships is grueling then it isn't balanced, is that right?

Haven't you answered your own question???
They're not just the big ships...they're the BIGGEST ships...so in any normal distribution...you'd expect FEW players to be in them...just as you'd expect (relatively) FEW players to be in the SMALLEST ships...you'd expect a distribution around the middle wouldn't you...
So the ability to RACE towards them by exploiting Game-Loopholes inherently unbalances the game EXPECIALLY as Frontier has neglected to put in any mechanisms to make running an incredibly complex interstellar vessel actually COST money - no Taxes, No docking Fees, no cost to store a ship, no need to ever service or maintain your ship etc etc...oh and as a final nod it includes the "Get out of Jail Free" card of the rebuy...without EVER having to pay an insurance premium...

 

[V'larr]

All your points are invalid.

A game like elite needs a clear progress line, not a fully balanced system. Playing time and deep understanding of the game should give you progress and a clear advantage over other players.

if you want balance, play chess. My opinion.

Balance and progression are not incompatible, despite what much of the game industry would have us believe.

It (just) takes effort and planning.

@OP, I concur, except you also forgot to include Combat balance issues.

 

[Hooplah]

Thousands of many posts before over the years. It is all about perspective and how each player decides how to play the game. Then when they add their own rules in their virtual space world they are not happy when others they meet in the ED universe don't play by their rules. That is actually what makes Elite Dangerous unique to each player and makes it different from any other game. Welcome to a game where anything goes. Master it and all other games with rules will no longer entertain you.

The balance is great the way it currently is. It has been tweaked a hundred times over the years. I cannot describe how upset I was when they nerfed trade then finally dialed it in correctly. While one might dismiss trade as a safe 'beginner player' career it is one that thousands of players consider the only career they are interested in and why they bought the game. It works great as is so leave it alone.

I really hate balance threads. It is always about one player deciding how everyone else should play the game. In America we call them Democrats.