Fully agree; I could have followed any of the guides everyone else did. This is the first time I regretted it, but I'm good, now. Just had a moment of frustration and made a post. Whoops.
The Exploits Have Damaged Elite
- Thread starter Nebohtes
- Start date
Fully agree; I could have followed any of the guides everyone else did. This is the first time I regretted it, but I'm good, now. Just had a moment of frustration and made a post. Whoops.
Everyone knows these aren't intended, though, so the whole "it's not cheating or an exploit!" is defending knowing better, or the people who report it wouldn't get shamed for bringing it up to FDev; if you weren't doing anything wrong, why get upset when someone tells teacher?
Everyone has their breaking point. Frontier has a problem with extremes. In a 4+ year old game, this shouldn’t even be a conversation. It is. Because they have selective hearing loss, assume every change has to be extreme for the player base to notice and fundamentally don’t engage with the game on any level that equates with player experience.
Until they engage, nothing will improve. Beyond suggests they are starting to engage. But it’s a buggy mess an a large amount of stuff is being turned off because the basicas simply haven’t been worked through and the developer is building what they think we want “on principle” rather than with an actual understanding.
I can relate to the frustration. My hour count is down. I am spending more time elsewhere. Everyone has their limit. Do what works for you, and where you have gained time back, invest it elsewhere. Nothing motivates a developer more to engage than a shrinking player base.
I want Frontier to succeed. And I want the game to be something special. There is a large amount to like, but - It’s clear something will have to give for that improvement to happen. They haven’t had that fright yet. It’s not focused their efforts.
Eventually, it will. It does, for all developers, at some point. This isn’t doom and gloom. It’s the recognition that every game has a cycle. And at some point Elite will experience that. They always do. Or they fail. I hope it’s the former. Because I love this game.
Last edited:
I've spent over $70.00 in the store over the last couple of days. I'm definitely not saying it was because of Volyboom, but rather the fact that I'm having a LOT of fun playing lately, since 3.0 dropped.
Though, with that said, this evening I spent about $11.00 in the store on laser/engine detailing and it hasn't shown up ingame for over three hours, so a little sad about that.
Because it's not wrong!!!
Ugh... (rubs eyes)..
Look. If it was "wrong" accounts would be getting suspended. Or banned.
Your perception of reality is subjective. Just because it's "your" truth doesn't make it "the" truth.
3.0 is still a better love story than Twilight. They have a way to go, but there are hints of brilliance in 3. I hope we see more.
People get p'd off because FDev over react. Because they nerf missions but never increase payouts. Because the responses to exaggerated click bate titles are always disproportionate and poorly thought out.
I don't think anybody taking part considered Upsilon cheating, it was 45 minutes of stacking missions and 45 minutes in Supercruise, it was a tedious grind that required a bunch of prep work, with the reward feeling proportionate to the huge time investment required to get something significant out of it.
"In video games, an exploit is the use of a bug or glitches, game system, rates, hit boxes, or speed, etc. by a player to their advantage in a manner not intended by the game's designers."
Upsilon didn't come under this definition and yet people were just as unhappy when those few teachers pets (fits with your analogy, right) complained about it to a point of being nerfed.
Last edited:
I bought something (so much stuff recently I can't even remember what it was. Maybe the Corvette kit, or could be Galvanised Cutter paints?) the other evening that took about an hour to arrive, and usually they're pretty instant. I know they've been having problems with PayPal recently so I just chalked it up to a payment processor type thing and checked again later. You should be able to see the status of the actual order on your store account page. Mine was showing as pending when usually it changes straight to complete.
*edit - I stick with pink for engine and weapon detailing. Purely because a whole lot of folk find pink things in space quite anathema. So I pile on the pink, just for their precious souls.
Last edited:
Mine just shows that I successfully ordered and paid for my items. Nothing about how long it might be until they show up. Normally it's within minutes. At any rate, I've been feeling very expansive lately.
If it's not wrong you don't have to defend it, but here you are... again.
Stuck in a hotel. Again..
And why not speak against these snowflakes who continue to insist FD cater to the lowest common denominator?
Last edited:
I can understand why players follow the gold rushes, I really do. I saw videos of the Federal Corvette, and that was my goal. I started playing the game expressly for the purposes of getting that ship.
And I did.
And past a certain point, I had no fun doing it.
Because the activities I enjoyed doing (Bounty Hunting, some exploring) were subjectively worse for me than doing data courier missions out in the middle of nowhere for 32mil an hour and Federal Navy rank points (which BH and exploring doesn't earn you). I wasn't even exploiting. There was a system that would spawn 20+ data courier missions per board that all paid ~800k from a decent selection of Federally aligned factions. I grab a full 20, drop them off, and by the time I came back the mission boards would have reset and given me a whole new set of 20 to do.
And I did it.
Over.
And over.
And over.
Because playing the game any other way was objectively worse for completing my goal. I needed Federation rank points for the Corvette, and I was earning a lot of Federation rank points per run. I needed cash to buy the ship and the modules, and by the time I was done, I'd bought a Python, an Anaconda, and a Corvette, and had full A ranked combat fitments for all of them (Well, except the Corvette. I pulled stuff off the Anaconda and repurposed it in to an explorer. I even bought Military hull plate for the Corvette because I had money to burn).
But now I have my Corvette, and all it's A ranked modules. And you know what? I'm having fun again.
I'm having fun because I don't need money anymore for anything but my rebuys. I don't feel bad about flying about in a Haz Res with my buddies, because I have what I want. I can go off and spend hours upon hours visiting systems nobody else will ever see and enjoy the sight seeing. Just today I spent almost an hour base jumping my SRV off a 6km cliff over and over again, because I wanted to see if I could stick that landing with out loosing control (we really need in air yaw control over SRVs, by the by), and I'm currently debating the merits of making a run out Colonia, a run out to Beagle point (less sanguine, since I've yet to master the art of using a NS with out baking my ship), or running out to see if I can farm up some of those new Guardian weapons and modules.
I don't know why people say money can't buy happiness, because I'm way happier now that I have money than I was before.
And I did.
And past a certain point, I had no fun doing it.
Because the activities I enjoyed doing (Bounty Hunting, some exploring) were subjectively worse for me than doing data courier missions out in the middle of nowhere for 32mil an hour and Federal Navy rank points (which BH and exploring doesn't earn you). I wasn't even exploiting. There was a system that would spawn 20+ data courier missions per board that all paid ~800k from a decent selection of Federally aligned factions. I grab a full 20, drop them off, and by the time I came back the mission boards would have reset and given me a whole new set of 20 to do.
And I did it.
Over.
And over.
And over.
Because playing the game any other way was objectively worse for completing my goal. I needed Federation rank points for the Corvette, and I was earning a lot of Federation rank points per run. I needed cash to buy the ship and the modules, and by the time I was done, I'd bought a Python, an Anaconda, and a Corvette, and had full A ranked combat fitments for all of them (Well, except the Corvette. I pulled stuff off the Anaconda and repurposed it in to an explorer. I even bought Military hull plate for the Corvette because I had money to burn).
But now I have my Corvette, and all it's A ranked modules. And you know what? I'm having fun again.
I'm having fun because I don't need money anymore for anything but my rebuys. I don't feel bad about flying about in a Haz Res with my buddies, because I have what I want. I can go off and spend hours upon hours visiting systems nobody else will ever see and enjoy the sight seeing. Just today I spent almost an hour base jumping my SRV off a 6km cliff over and over again, because I wanted to see if I could stick that landing with out loosing control (we really need in air yaw control over SRVs, by the by), and I'm currently debating the merits of making a run out Colonia, a run out to Beagle point (less sanguine, since I've yet to master the art of using a NS with out baking my ship), or running out to see if I can farm up some of those new Guardian weapons and modules.
I don't know why people say money can't buy happiness, because I'm way happier now that I have money than I was before.
You realize that the very term "Gold Rush" comes from the CEO of Frontier and that the BGS was explicitly setup to create them, right?
... played video games, and that's more years than I'll admit to [nethack, anyone?] For that matter, are "card counters' exploiting the "mechanics" of a deck of playing cards? No [despite what the casinos may say] they have homed in on a quirk of mathematics and used it to their advantage.
That is what I'd expect from such a system... "perfect storms" of opportunity that come and go....
I certainly agree with those statements. Personal experience: when I was building computers in the Early Stone Age of Personal Computing, I got my parts from several vendors at a thin margin of profit. Then I discovered where the wholesalers were for those shops and my profit margin went up. Then I found out about "overshipments" and dockside "pallet sales" and my profit margin increased considerably although I had to invest capital to do that...
When some chip fabs went up in smoke in Taiwan and China, suddenly the only two manufacturers of RAM left jacked up their prices by a big margin. Were they "cheating?" Nope - supply and demand.
The BGS is, of course, unknowable, as it is a very complex system. So I'd expect certain "hot spots" showing up as Selfie and Phord say. Random factors do sometimes coalesce into a "high run" or "winning streak." I don't think there's anything unnatural about that.
As to the last statement, "strike while the iron is hot" and all that; these are micro-opportunities and aren't going to stay around forever. I really don't think FD should be worrying about these blips that don't involve, say, real exploits like the G1 mats for G5 levels. If someone's gonna pay me 25mil to haul poop from one end of the Bubble to the other, why not do it? It's "trader savvy" or whatever you want to call it.
Now, last, about the first comment above: I have 4bil+ in credits and assets totalling 3-4 more. That is what I made in 3+ years of playing this game. I got my first leg up on a CG that bought me my first Anaconda. Learning the trader's secrets, just like in the real world, gave me a competitive and lucrative edge as a trader. When I achieved a Cutter [all A-rated too] last summer, I was quite satisfied with my purchase; I'd been working towards it for a looooonnnggg time.
I tried Sothis-Ceos once, was bored. Tried multiple-leg smuggling; hated being interdicted so much. I did the Palin missions to buy the Cutter an A-rated power plant and thrusters [325mil] and to "get gud" on planetary landings. Now I can bumble around the galaxy looking at cool places and not worry about credits (til the Panther Clipper comes). I feel satisfied with my "career" and am in no way bothered that someone else has 59bil and 40 ships. I certainly don't feel cheated and I certainly feel I've gotten my money's worth in enjoyment and game-time [2000+ hrs]
Unless you're a PVP-only maven, I can't see why you need much more than half a billion or so to fund a loooonnngggg time ingame doing nothing but what you want to do. To get that, yeah, you're going to have to do some dedicated playing. But what else would you be doing? Isn't that all part of the game?
Last edited:
I never exploited nor do I play the game terribly often, I was just smart with what I spent my credits on. I placed highly in community goals at the time to fund my FDL, then murdered pirates and ran smuggling missions to fund my Annie. After that money wasn't much of problem.
Namecalling, justification... you're only trying to convince yourself. I'm just an observer.
Steam seems determined I've been at this for about 8000 hours...
But, the game doesn't appear to count the time I've invested on the launcher while passed out on the keyboard so it's probably more accurate. The trading profits are a bit naff, it took me months to get anywhere until I discovered some of the CG's hauling high value and high margin goods, plus a bonus reward at the end. Ditto for the bounty CG's, that bonus reward is quite a nice boost to the coffers.
Where I made the bulk of my cash though, and all legit was on the ruins mission, in that narrow window of opportunity between FDev finally making it completable, and nerfing the reward money down to CR 10M but it still pays 21 million an hour for a five hour round trip. Such is life, you have to be in it, and paying attention (there's always some cost involved) to win it as they say.
The origin of these apparent 'exploits' is when FDev comes up with some brilliant new mechanic but fails to fully test all the edge cases, so they don't realise that long distance one way economy passenger runs to a very small number of quite unique systems are going to pay a ridiculous amount of cash if you stumble across that one-off lucky mission.
Some people might take that one lonely mission that happened to spawn and think themselves lucky, because they were, and that may even be a working as intended thing in FDev's eyes but then there's the folks who see that one mission and wonder if the board will spawn another if they mode flip. Sometimes it won't, other times it will spawn another ONE, and then they mode flip again for more. That behaviour, while ambitious could also be considered cheating, because they're forcing the board to refresh but they're not using any third party app or code mod to do it, so it's not technically illegal and people are unlikely to be banned for it.
Either way, if you're looking for opportunities to cash up, make sure you're active in the game around patch time since it's change that creates these edge cases that tend to get overlooked by the dev team. Keep an eye on Youtube for someone explaining how to do it, and get on it quick before FDev nerf the entire mechanic to stop people being silly with it while they figure out how to make the rewards more reasonable or fix the NPC ships failing to defend whatever it is you're killing for millions.
At the same time, if you're paying attention, FDev seem to like it when we go and engage with whatever new content they've just added after spending months making it look pretty, and they offer some nice incentives to entice us into compliance. The Guardian Ruins mission was one, when it finally worked. Palin's mission to collect toxic alien stuff was another and there will probably be more.
Unfortunately, for the casual Elite player that doesn't pay any attention to what's going on, the rewards are fairly close to the amount of effort they've put in - none.
But, the game doesn't appear to count the time I've invested on the launcher while passed out on the keyboard so it's probably more accurate. The trading profits are a bit naff, it took me months to get anywhere until I discovered some of the CG's hauling high value and high margin goods, plus a bonus reward at the end. Ditto for the bounty CG's, that bonus reward is quite a nice boost to the coffers.
Where I made the bulk of my cash though, and all legit was on the ruins mission, in that narrow window of opportunity between FDev finally making it completable, and nerfing the reward money down to CR 10M but it still pays 21 million an hour for a five hour round trip. Such is life, you have to be in it, and paying attention (there's always some cost involved) to win it as they say.
The origin of these apparent 'exploits' is when FDev comes up with some brilliant new mechanic but fails to fully test all the edge cases, so they don't realise that long distance one way economy passenger runs to a very small number of quite unique systems are going to pay a ridiculous amount of cash if you stumble across that one-off lucky mission.
Some people might take that one lonely mission that happened to spawn and think themselves lucky, because they were, and that may even be a working as intended thing in FDev's eyes but then there's the folks who see that one mission and wonder if the board will spawn another if they mode flip. Sometimes it won't, other times it will spawn another ONE, and then they mode flip again for more. That behaviour, while ambitious could also be considered cheating, because they're forcing the board to refresh but they're not using any third party app or code mod to do it, so it's not technically illegal and people are unlikely to be banned for it.
Either way, if you're looking for opportunities to cash up, make sure you're active in the game around patch time since it's change that creates these edge cases that tend to get overlooked by the dev team. Keep an eye on Youtube for someone explaining how to do it, and get on it quick before FDev nerf the entire mechanic to stop people being silly with it while they figure out how to make the rewards more reasonable or fix the NPC ships failing to defend whatever it is you're killing for millions.
At the same time, if you're paying attention, FDev seem to like it when we go and engage with whatever new content they've just added after spending months making it look pretty, and they offer some nice incentives to entice us into compliance. The Guardian Ruins mission was one, when it finally worked. Palin's mission to collect toxic alien stuff was another and there will probably be more.
Unfortunately, for the casual Elite player that doesn't pay any attention to what's going on, the rewards are fairly close to the amount of effort they've put in - none.
You are not the only one. I've also avoided exploits and gold rushes. Here's the thing: If you can't have fun in a small ship in ED, you're probably not going to have fun in a big one either. Sure, the big ships are more capable, but they are more expensive to buy, to outfit, to restock, to maintain, to rebuy. Owning a big ship can mean an even bigger grind.
I've been playing for nearly 3 years. It took me months to save up for my second ship, a Cobra. After nearly a year, I was able to buy an Asp Explorer. After playing for 2 more years, that's still my favorite ship. I own other ships, which I hardly ever fly. I'd sell them, but they are full of engineered modules.
Honestly, it sounds like you're getting burned out on ED. When that happens (to almost all of us at one point or another), what I do is take a break from the game. I'm usually back in a week or two and I'm enjoying the game again. Seriously: Give it a try. [up]
Exactly. Comparing your progress with others will only lead to bitterness. (In case you haven't noticed, there's a lot of that in the forums.)
Unfortunately, you're right.
I doubt the complaining actually triggered the nerf. We've been complaining on this forum since day 1, and FD hasn't changed a lot of the things players have complained about (or only made small, half-hearted changes). The one thing that gives me hope for the future is that FD seems to be back on track (mostly) with the Beyond changes.
True. I made a good bit of cash on those missions, as well as some of the CGs, but I've made the vast majority of my credits via exploration.
I've acquired a fair bit of cash, at ~1 million cr / hour, because I hardly ever need to spend it. My Asp is cheap to maintain, fully equipped with A and D modules, has a scoop, but no weapons.
The payouts have increased continuously since I first started playing. These days it feels like the game just gives me way more credits than I'll ever need or use.
Last edited:
Indeed. They may have ignored solo players, but just wait until FD turn their attentions to exploration. The way FD borked everything else with regards to PvP, C&P, MC (etc.) doesn't bode well.
Aside from that, I'm happier with ED than I have been for a while now.
Last edited by a moderator: