Mode switching for missions and Smeaton Orbital [200mill/hour]

[[VR] Mad Mike]

So what you decided wasn't an exploit and wasn't going to be changed is now an exploit and has been nerfed.

Not just nerfed reasonably of course, nerfed FD style with a wrecking ball.

The mode swapping to refresh boards was confirmed an exploit in a live stream over 2 years ago....... But not one that would be punished.

But the long range passenger profits.... I guess I am wrong but who said it was an exploit? Unbalanced and in need to tweaking? Sure! But I didn't notice it called an exploit

It seems FD have done a classic FD! However in their defence they have a lot on their plate right now and they HAVE said they will get back to balancing it and releasing the scaling again presumably once beyond is out.

 

[zarrazee]

Great news Will. +1.

 

[Karunamon]

However in their defence they have a lot on their plate right now

But apparently not enough to not have time to go break something a tiny minority of people wanted to be broken. Again.

Look, this is simple math. Somewhere in the code for the BGS, there is a variable that controls how and to what degree station distance impacts payout. (Because why is it 200m/hr instead of 100m or 1B?)

Rather than *decrease it slightly*, they *zeroed* it. And inflicted a ton of collateral damage at the same time.

I don't buy the "they're so busy" excuse. If they were so busy, they should have left it the hell alone.

But yeah. Classic FD. On that we're in sad, vehement agreement.

 

[Andy918]

Do the local runs - 3 or 4 systems havea mix of requirements between them and you're only looking at 5-10 mins travel time in between.

how about you do that and tell me when you have enough to buy and a rate a corvette and stil have some money for the rebuy,because those federation idiots cant scan you from far away so they ram you then explode .than all the fed ships shoot you .so you need that rebuy just in case.problem is board flip.easily solved with the same algorithm as the Lavian Brandy

 

[Coccolino]

Probably the hypercomplex math formula which such missions payment is based on requires weeks of investigation to be studied and adjusted. Not something you do in a spare 15 minutes.

 

[Rittings]

But apparently not enough to not have time to go break something a tiny minority of people wanted to be broken. Again.

Look, this is simple math. Somewhere in the code for the BGS, there is a variable that controls how and to what degree station distance impacts payout. (Because why is it 200m/hr instead of 100m or 1B?)

Rather than *decrease it slightly*, they *zeroed* it. And inflicted a ton of collateral damage at the same time.

I don't buy the "they're so busy" excuse. If they were so busy, they should have left it the hell alone.

But yeah. Classic FD. On that we're in sad, vehement agreement.

I agree fully with this. It needed nerfing - but it didn't need zero-ing. I do runs to Targari (which is near Smeaton - and I didn't realize just how close I was to making all those millions of credits until 2 days ago lol) - but now, those 25 minute travel times from Star to Station for 10,000cr just won't be worth it. i enjoyed taking a longer run for 500-700k cr. I made approximately 2-5 million credits per hour if I got nice boards... (I don't board hop either... i just travel to different stations).

Now my game has to change because FD nerfed too hard.

 

[Ryan Murdoc]

The backwater Systems finally will become abandoned again as they were before 2.4, which might make certain people happy.

 

[AndiBcool]

Well there we have another bad thought out nerf.
First take the headlines of this thread, its total not telling the truth. You have to be very very lucky to reach a 200mil payout and need to have the right shipoutfit for it.
From what i was seeing at the mission boards enconomy transport mission was the worst payout but there where kinda plenty, there where also some business and a few 1st class transport missions that payed out much more.
The 1st clas ones ( i have seen only 2 or 3) did pay out over 50 mil for transporting 16-22 ppl, the business missions where almost like the enconomy class missions at the payout just did require a different cabin.

The highest payout i got at the few times i did this ( note i actually only play once or two times a week now ) was 120 mil the lowest was 70 mil.
You could only archive this amount when you already have an Elite title ( im tripple Elite for quite some time now and earned em the hard way ), a big ship Beluga, Cutter or Anaconda but i beleave Anaconda was best and be allied with at least 3 or more fractions.
To become allied with the fractions took already a few hours, Elite title might be more easy nowadays but should still take some time i think and the big ships yeah they cost a few 100 Mil you have to have too.

You know why i like thease high payout missions ? Because i already spend hours and hours earning money and actually i dont want to spend more of the many hours to buy a top rated T-10 for 600Mil or more.
Well needless to say i did buy it instandly after it was released (and i was not doin this passengers before), but i really think its way overpriced for what it is.

I mean common you have ranks in empire and federation, fractions, and also the pilots ranks, just lock good high paying missions behind thouse and new players wont be able to take them if you have a problem with high rewarding missions.

Who cares if i have 1,3 bil or 2,3 bil when i already have all ships and nothing more to do (aside from the CQC rank maybe) ?
Why should i spend more endless hours to earn even more cash ? To say the amount of credits show my boredom ? The only reason to earn more cash is to buy a new ship for me and store it in the hangar.

Basicly i only use a few ships most of the time DB Explorer for Taxi and exploring, Asp for exploring and planatary landings, Python for missions, Vette for combat. I fly other ships too now and then and i played a lot of the others back then but not anymore.

Actuallly thouse engineers and the mats plus that low limit you can take is mostly the reason the game started not to be fun anymore. Whith Elite in Combat you have to engineer your ship, because the NPCs have engineered stuff and yeah i really dont like this time wasting search and randon results. It killed the most fun for me.

Doin Community goals for money ? Yes back then quite a lot but now i have a Cutter, the goal is a bonus but supplys will dry up fast when trading. For combat, yeah can be fun but money wise dont know. I will wait if i get a hot ship also when hitting a NPC by mistake or get a bounty due a bug. If thats the fact it guess i will be even a more ruined game ( thanks PVP PPL and griefers ).

Actually i really miss fun stuff or interesting stuff, team play, and epic battles.

Im just here and waiting.

This stuff was boring but rewarding but got nerfed now to not worth doin.

So what can i do now ? I know fly the conda back to earth and store it away, then log out and wait for contend, wait for matches in CQC or go tag new systems with my name in the endless space.

Hmm i guess i log and play something else.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

But apparently not enough to not have time to go break something a tiny minority of people wanted to be broken. Again.

Look, this is simple math. Somewhere in the code for the BGS, there is a variable that controls how and to what degree station distance impacts payout. (Because why is it 200m/hr instead of 100m or 1B?)

Rather than *decrease it slightly*, they *zeroed* it. And inflicted a ton of collateral damage at the same time.

I don't buy the "they're so busy" excuse. If they were so busy, they should have left it the hell alone.

But yeah. Classic FD. On that we're in sad, vehement agreement.

Post clearly said they have plans to solve this during Q1 beta, and they decided to disable it for now because it started to raise red flags in lot of things in the game

 

[Jazzy]

Completely agree with the change, but "Come On FD" It took you this long to work it out......... Everyone used it up to make Billions (even I used it to get a few extra bucks I wanted) and now you nerf it when it will not matter.. Bravo!!!!!!

This is why currently many of us are logging in less and less each week, exploits take ages to fix (Go ignored til its to late) and when you do the fix is meaningless since everyone who was going to use it has done so.

I truly hope that this coming year you actually stick to the plan and do what you have said about core systems and not just slap some band-aid on them and move on. I want to play again like I did, but just can not find the drive to do so much more. (Maybe its the insane amount of hours I have already I may be burnt out, but also the bugs and exploits (slackness of fixing them) has helped along the way.

Time will tell I suppose, and I stay hopeful that 2018 will be the year Frontier "Makes Elite, Great Again!".... Hmm David Braben for President??

 

[Konkasaurusrex]

Disregard

 

[saman]

Just another player here who thinks a developer just had a nervous breakdown and broke a system which gave FUN for lots of players. Not ALL of them, obviously, but... just check the logs, a lot of players.
Also an (ex) game designer here who thinks this is not the way to fix things, not the way to finetune a released game, not the way to communicate with (paying!) players. I hope that the person responsible for this and other nerfs already mentioned in this thread will find peace and their dream job, which is obviously not videogame developing. Please do this, and I wish good luck for that.

 

[Fei Long]

Well Elite is dead for me as far as I'm concerned now. Unfortunately I have a real life with a job, parenting, and other responsibilities, so wasting hours doing boring missions just to make a few measly tens of millions of credits that wouldn't even cover the rebuy of my largest ship isn't something I want to waste my life on. I quit the game some time ago and came back with some buddies to try and do something different. We were already thinking on what paints and nameplates to get for the "new ships". Too bad. Anyway... Great job on the game. I wish I had seen a Thargoid. If you guys fix it so you can make credits at a reasonable pace, I guess someone can message me in the future. Ciao commanders, it was interesting o7

 

[andrak]

Well Elite is dead for me as far as I'm concerned now. Unfortunately I have a real life with a job, parenting, and other responsibilities, so wasting hours doing boring missions just to make a few measly tens of millions of credits that wouldn't even cover the rebuy of my largest ship isn't something I want to waste my life on. I quit the game some time ago and came back with some buddies to try and do something different. We were already thinking on what paints and nameplates to get for the "new ships". Too bad. Anyway... Great job on the game. I wish I had seen a Thargoid. If you guys fix it so you can make credits at a reasonable pace, I guess someone can message me in the future. Ciao commanders, it was interesting o7

It wasn't the first big money maker and it won't be the last.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Well Elite is dead for me as far as I'm concerned now. Unfortunately I have a real life with a job, parenting, and other responsibilities, so wasting hours doing boring missions just to make a few measly tens of millions of credits that wouldn't even cover the rebuy of my largest ship isn't something I want to waste my life on. I quit the game some time ago and came back with some buddies to try and do something different. We were already thinking on what paints and nameplates to get for the "new ships". Too bad. Anyway... Great job on the game. I wish I had seen a Thargoid. If you guys fix it so you can make credits at a reasonable pace, I guess someone can message me in the future. Ciao commanders, it was interesting o7

So you have tons of credits from doing this, implying you have big ships - and all you did was grinding more credits than went seeing Thargoid?

Why?

 

[zarking]

I've tried this smeaton thing a few times, I'm elite, allied etc, was still only making 70 to 120 million at most like other's have said.
Not that it matters, there's no reason to have 4 or 5 billion, and even if you just do res farming and a bit of exploring, you'll make 20 to 30 million before you realise it, that's way more than enough for anything.

Through playing a lot for 3 years I've got a healthy balance, but it just sits there, in a way it was far more exciting when I had just a few rebuys and had to juggle what I owned to afford something new.
So these get rich quick schemes have their place, but should be very short term or at least difficult to do. This isn't about caring how other people play, it's about my own gameplay, and I lost something from the game by chasing these.
Yes, more balance is needed, as you progress money should be more plentiful, not impossible to come by, but difficult enough to feel rewarded, no matter which activity you choose, it's no bad thing if these passenger missions are scaled back, what we do need is for sensible payouts as you progress.

 

[C64Fan]

Post clearly said they have plans to solve this during Q1 beta, and they decided to disable it for now because it started to raise red flags in lot of things in the game

Yes, exactly.

Guys, they said that “....we will be reviewing the Passenger Bulk missions and correct the previously mentioned element – hopefully in time for you to test in the Beyond Chapter One beta.” So take it easy for crying out loud! At least wait untill they come up with a solution, which could be only two days away, but probably longer. The extra rewards based on the distance from the star are only disabled temporarily.

 

[Tenkay10k]

Hello commanders,

As some of you are aware, Passenger Bulk missions are currently generating extremely high credit rewards that we feel are excessive of what we would consider reasonable and balanced.

After a detailed investigation, we can confirm that this is due to an element in our mission generation algorithm that rewards credits based on the distance of the destination system from the star.

Due to this, we will be disabling (until further notice) the aforementioned element of Passenger Bulk missions to reduce the amount of credits offered as a reward. Commanders will still be able to select and complete Passenger Bulk missions, but will see less excessive credit rewards.

In the meantime, we will be reviewing the Passenger Bulk missions and correct the previously mentioned element – hopefully in time for you to test in the Beyond Chapter One beta.

Thanks to all the players who reported the issue.

I was really enjoying chilling out just generating credits while watching some tv in my quiet time. Thanks for listening exclusively to people who just want to moan about how other people use the game mechanics You set to make a meaninglessly high amount of in-game credits legally. Now what, is fighting aliens or some other high-input-low-reward activity the only legal thing to do in the game? If making a lot of credits is illegal, remove credits altogether from the game.

 

[Fei Long]

So you have tons of credits from doing this, implying you have big ships - and all you did was grinding more credits than went seeing Thargoid?

Why?

I do not own big ships (asp-explorer, and a t-10 i just bought for the passenger missions). I didnt make really any money since I had just started. You see when I originally joined Elite I grinded for months to get Admiral Rank for the corvette. In the meantime I managed to get around 600 millions doing your worthless 300.000-500.000 credit rewards missions. The experience made me quit the game. I just came back recently pushed by friends. Seemed like an opportunity to gear the corvette, but seems I was too late... Anyways... Not blaming anyone. I guess I understand Frontier and the haters, but Im not going back to the grind. TL; DR: Please make this game less grindy... grind for rank, grind for money, grind for engineers... You guys need a bit of "game" in the game... and less grind.

 

[saman]

Just another player here who thinks that a FDev game developer had a nervous breakdown and broke a game feat that gave fun for a lots of players. Not all of them, but... just check the logs. A lot of players.
And also an (ex) game designer here who thinks that this is NOT the way to fix something (is not broken...), to finetune a released game, to communicate with (paid!) customers - the players of your game.
To the person(s) who are responsible for this and other wild nerfs and bad communication: I hope that you will find peace, and find your dream job which is obviously not videogame development. I wish the best for you.