I think they're a wee bit busy with the Beyond Beta at the moment. Give it a few days.
Passenger Missions Nurfed Again
- Thread starter worsin
- Start date
I think they're a wee bit busy with the Beyond Beta at the moment. Give it a few days.
Very true and on reflection I guess the ultimate disclaimer as regards software probably applies, you don't "own" it, you buy a license to install and use on your PC (or console) at the publisher's discretion. Guess you just have to adapt to the unintentional mini-game of "What's Profitable This week".
o7
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Just because you never got that doesn't mean no-one was.
There were other long-range passenger runs than Smeaton, there were plenty of different options around Smeaton for stations to try to pick up the missions at, some of which were better than others (and which ones were better would naturally vary over time with BGS states)
If you were only getting 70m/hour average from it, then there are methods which still exist and work in game (for now: I haven't checked what it's like in 3.0 beta yet) which will pay about that ... and are more interesting, too.
Really?
Taking legal action against a game developer for fixing a something that isn't working as they intended?
You don't think that's a teeny bit melodramatic?
No we're at the point where we've always been - boring, unengaging, unchallenging, uninteresting missions. What's interesting or fun flying passengers missions over and over? People want the money, they can't stand the missions - literally sitting there for 40 minutes in supercruise to hit a station isn't gameplay even in the slightest. It's making a game where you don't do anything. But at least at the end of it people would get a decent payout for wasting their time sitting there for so long.
No, not it doesn't. We pay for a license to use their game. We have no vested property interest in the game and do not "own" anything in the game. We do not even "own" any purchased doc like ship kits, paint jobs, etc.
In short FD could change all the ships to ponys and make us a fly around a rainbow and the only thing we could do about it is stop playing. There is no legal remedy.
Well ask non-horizons players. They don't get Engineers and yet the AI now, apparently, have engineered mods to the point one forum member said he simply cannot affect them. Mac users don't even get the option to buy the upgrade.
But I want my money nooooww!
*grin*
So this.
I suggest you don't go into the legal profession...
Actually you dont buy the game, you purchase the right to play the game. The game has and always will be property of FDev.
The code for the distance bonus was definitely broken, indeed, I'd often see missions for 70 Million Credits+ for a group of passengers. Of course, I couldn't actually take these missions, as they added another line of code that caused a deliberate server error when accepting any mission with a payout of more than 50 million credits. I've successfully taken 48 and 49 million credit missions in the past.
So, considering they were looking at the code already, why delete the distance bonus line entirely and not just divide the result by two or three? I mean, totally killing a certain type of mission vs. vastly reducing the payout, surely the latter is better. There's nothing stopping them from tweaking further over time.
Think of it this way, FDev know the furthest stations distances, they know what their logic does to generate the distance bonus. You'd imagine it'd be a matter of minutes for someone familiar with all this to tweak the formula so the payouts are reasonable.
So, in the location I was doing passenger runs in, I could often take a 20-40 million credit mission which would then take me over and hour to complete. So, lets assume just shy of 40 million credits an hour, if one of the good ones is generated. Going elsewhere, I can readily take cargo missions for 3 - 9 million a time, but I can complete them and be back at the station within about 10 minutes. This is giving a comparable payout for the same amount of time spent. Should these missions have their pay reduced to 30 thousand credits or so too?
If you're "stacking" the high paid missions, sure, the payout can be great, but it's not like it's quick and easy money. Like other have said, you need to have built rep first before the decent offers generate, and of course you're doing this at several stations over time. I.e. Call into Station 1 in system A, check for passengers and missions to destination station & load up. Fly to Station 2 in system A, repeat, fly to Station 1 in system B repeat...etc. etc. I tend to use up much of the delivery window, hunting for other missions before the counter ticks down far enough that I have to stop collecting more missions and head off. Add to this having multiple missions stacked often mean a lot of guys are sent after you, so it's evade, fight or submit and run time multiple times on the trip. Fun, involved gameplay with a decent money reward.
So yeah, I get something needed to be done, but a taking a giant ban hammer to the distance bonus, rather that just tweaking it, seems excessive. Considering how many people like these missions - for whatever reason - it's a shame. I had been doing the odd passenger run every now and again, currently doing a cargo CG, which isn't as entertaining at all.
Scoob.
So, considering they were looking at the code already, why delete the distance bonus line entirely and not just divide the result by two or three? I mean, totally killing a certain type of mission vs. vastly reducing the payout, surely the latter is better. There's nothing stopping them from tweaking further over time.
Think of it this way, FDev know the furthest stations distances, they know what their logic does to generate the distance bonus. You'd imagine it'd be a matter of minutes for someone familiar with all this to tweak the formula so the payouts are reasonable.
So, in the location I was doing passenger runs in, I could often take a 20-40 million credit mission which would then take me over and hour to complete. So, lets assume just shy of 40 million credits an hour, if one of the good ones is generated. Going elsewhere, I can readily take cargo missions for 3 - 9 million a time, but I can complete them and be back at the station within about 10 minutes. This is giving a comparable payout for the same amount of time spent. Should these missions have their pay reduced to 30 thousand credits or so too?
If you're "stacking" the high paid missions, sure, the payout can be great, but it's not like it's quick and easy money. Like other have said, you need to have built rep first before the decent offers generate, and of course you're doing this at several stations over time. I.e. Call into Station 1 in system A, check for passengers and missions to destination station & load up. Fly to Station 2 in system A, repeat, fly to Station 1 in system B repeat...etc. etc. I tend to use up much of the delivery window, hunting for other missions before the counter ticks down far enough that I have to stop collecting more missions and head off. Add to this having multiple missions stacked often mean a lot of guys are sent after you, so it's evade, fight or submit and run time multiple times on the trip. Fun, involved gameplay with a decent money reward.
So yeah, I get something needed to be done, but a taking a giant ban hammer to the distance bonus, rather that just tweaking it, seems excessive. Considering how many people like these missions - for whatever reason - it's a shame. I had been doing the odd passenger run every now and again, currently doing a cargo CG, which isn't as entertaining at all.
Scoob.
No! NononononoNONONO! Bad poster! No biscuit!
You never, ever, ever make 'a quick tweak' to live production code unless you are absolutely up against the wall. You try it and test it somewhere safe first.
I've seen what happens sometimes if you don't. It isn't pretty.
True story: about 7-8 years ago at the company I was then at, someone made what they thought was a small, safe change to a customer's SQL server to improve performance.
5 minutes later that SQL server was effectively dead in the water.
5 minutes after that so were the 8 other servers that it replicated to.
It took three of us a couple of hours to un-bork it.
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200m was only achievable with one of the big 3 once allied with all factions, it in fact took a fair amount of data grinding to build up rep for pittance. On my PC account (Elite) I rocked up and made 3 runs the first was 80m after mode switching and doing some data missions, perhaps 1hr gathering these 80m of missions and delivered them (further 45 min)
Second run was just mode switching, I managed to fill most of my Vette's cabins in 30 mins for a cool 120m. Third run was about 150m but took a wee bit longer to fill up the cabins. To get 200m an hour you would need to fill your cabins in 15 mins, sorry not possible so I believe these figures are exaggerated.
I tried to do Smeaton runs on my xBox account, Solo Mode only (no Live) and it was near on impossible to get any missions as my commander had only Merchant Rank and no affiliation at all. With no mode switching I was lucky to get 1 mission going to Smeaton worth taking.
The big payout do require you to mode switch and have a top ship/high ranking commander, from my tests any commander can't just rock up and earn 200m cr/hr.
FDev have said they want to have increased mission payouts for long runs so I'm sure we will see something in 3.0, hopefully better balanced but still worth doing, and hopefully some variety because flipping boards for 30mins and sitting in SC for 45mins isn't gameplay. It's almost a tragedy people are complaining it's been taken away!
Second run was just mode switching, I managed to fill most of my Vette's cabins in 30 mins for a cool 120m. Third run was about 150m but took a wee bit longer to fill up the cabins. To get 200m an hour you would need to fill your cabins in 15 mins, sorry not possible so I believe these figures are exaggerated.
I tried to do Smeaton runs on my xBox account, Solo Mode only (no Live) and it was near on impossible to get any missions as my commander had only Merchant Rank and no affiliation at all. With no mode switching I was lucky to get 1 mission going to Smeaton worth taking.
The big payout do require you to mode switch and have a top ship/high ranking commander, from my tests any commander can't just rock up and earn 200m cr/hr.
FDev have said they want to have increased mission payouts for long runs so I'm sure we will see something in 3.0, hopefully better balanced but still worth doing, and hopefully some variety because flipping boards for 30mins and sitting in SC for 45mins isn't gameplay. It's almost a tragedy people are complaining it's been taken away!
Guess i will work on my combat ranking now and maybe rank up for a Vette too, just wish people would stop moaning about what other do to make money.
They're fixing a broken game mechanic, that's all.
Lol, I was being a little tongue in cheek there, my point being that the devs did make a "quick tweak" and people are a little unhappy. However, the point stands. FDev have have applied a change that kills a mission type dead. It is now a pointless mission that is wasting space on the mission board. No one is going to waste 40 minutes to an hour in SC for the current reward level...at least, I very much doubt it. If however they'd wrapped the whole equation in brackets, and popped a "/ 3" after it (simplification) the insane payouts would have been reduced a lot, but the missions would still potentially offer enough of a reward for players to consider it worth their time.
So yeah, "quick tweak" as in minimal code change, but obviously due diligence still applies - i.e. test it internally first - but if dividing a number by three for something that just a mission reward value after all, can lead to the developer breaking something, then perhaps they need to go on a refresher course lol.
At the end of the day, this is a game, not some critical software system controlling prioritisation of Emergency calls, making sure peoples pay cheques are correct or monitoring a the reactor in an NPP. The nerfing of these missions isn't hurting anyone, it's just that there were better "quick fix" options available to them in my opinion.
Scoob.