Wing mission balance pass

[shemmie]

Came back on tonight to complete the mission mentioned earlier.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...balance-pass?p=6540731&viewfull=1#post6540731

We've resolved the points in my earlier post - by missing the deadline, we don't have to sit through the rest of the mission tonight. I'm not bitter.

 

[TheSisko]

I was looking forward to Wing Missions.

Its now, what? 3 weeks since the release of 3.0?

Number of Wing Missions I've attempted?

Zero.

The reward, and tonnage to move, simply aren't worth it compared to solo missions. Hopefully winged players are getting more out of them.........right?

 

[Hadet]

I want the payment posted for mission to be the Total Paid. Not, let me go scream "FREE MONEY" to 3 noobwinders and they magically get millions for nothing more than joining another playwer's Wing - at NO EXPENSE to the Experienced player.

If I put in 100% of the effort then it is perfectly within my rights to get ALL of the money paid to the "wing", but as I have stated several times I feel that if I am accepting a mission then I get to choose my risk/reward level = 4000t Biowaste, I will haul it myself; 4000t Palladium, I am gonna hire out protection. But if I am going to bring anyone else along, then I get to choose whom to bring and I should be SHARING the compensation appropriately - not GIFTING them the result of some Made-Up Magical Money Multiplier that has nothing to do with Effort or Risk/Reward and everything to do with whoever happens to be fluffilng you when you hit Accept on the Mission Board.

I have a great solution for you friend, You personally should not do wing missions with a wing of noobs in Sidewinders then. Also if you were doing 100% of the work with the way they were working before this update you were looking at maybe 5mil in profits because you were buying all the commodities. I feel like the people complaining here never even tried the missions. No one was getting magic free money, the people that were helping noobs were generally losing money by choice to help some new players or friends out. I know Friends are a foreign concept to a lot of you. Some people don't have the time to treat Elite like a Second Job, and their friends were helping them catch up at least in the Asset divide with them. And guess what? It wasn't hurting anyone. If they used that money to buy PvP Ships they still have to Engineer them which is a headache. We were using the money to save up for a Fleet Carrier for the end of the year, a lot of people seem to forget that unlike The Cannon we're not going to magically get handed a Megaship smaller player groups are gonna have to buy them.

The way this was working was pretty simple. People would get 4 wing missions, you'd have one or two guys in Type 9's or Cutters solo'ing their missions while the people in smaller ships worked on the other ones together, when the guys in Type-9's finished their profit margins were worse than doing a solo mission on their mission they were solo'ing but once all four missions were done they made good money. It wasn't this magic 100mil an hour everyone thinks it was more like maybe half that. People were looking at their Inara pages and not actually doing the math themselves. If you were LUCKY You'd get 100mil after a stack was finished but that could take up to 2+ Hours unless literally everyone was in Type-9's., It was also teaching noobs trade and outfitting. We brought in a few guys got them in T6's and T7's and then we walked them through how to find commodities, and what was time effective and what wasn't, and we let them make mistakes with their outfitting to help them learn how to PLAY THE GAME.

 

[mtt9999 [Parabolus]]

Sweet! I for one enjoy increased difficulty in this game... especially in combat [but trading is cool too]

 

[LP Garnell]

I want the payment posted for mission to be the Total Paid. Not, let me go scream "FREE MONEY" to 3 noobwinders and they magically get millions for nothing more than joining another playwer's Wing - at NO EXPENSE to the Experienced player.

. . . .

- not GIFTING them the result of some Made-Up Magical Money Multiplier that has nothing to do with Effort or Risk/Reward and everything to do with whoever happens to be fluffilng you when you hit Accept on the Mission Board.

And this harms YOU how?

 

[Screemonster]

The way this was working was pretty simple. People would get 4 wing missions, you'd have one or two guys in Type 9's or Cutters solo'ing their missions while the people in smaller ships worked on the other ones together, when the guys in Type-9's finished their profit margins were worse than doing a solo mission on their mission they were solo'ing but once all four missions were done they made good money. It wasn't this magic 100mil an hour everyone thinks it was more like maybe half that. People were looking at their Inara pages and not actually doing the math themselves. If you were LUCKY You'd get 100mil after a stack was finished but that could take up to 2+ Hours unless literally everyone was in Type-9's., It was also teaching noobs trade and outfitting. We brought in a few guys got them in T6's and T7's and then we walked them through how to find commodities, and what was time effective and what wasn't, and we let them make mistakes with their outfitting to help them learn how to PLAY THE GAME.

Before this balance pass, one day last week, a bunch of other players and I were doing it and we were all in T9s and cutters. No noobwinders here, just all four of us in the big end-tier hauling ships doing end-tier hauling, all four of us stacking commodities and checking prices and seeing what missions we could grab next, and you know what? We had a blast. It was great, it was an actual incentive for us to work together. Some missions we could fly out and get them in a single run (2000t goes quick when you've got four ships with two C8 slots each), others we'd deliberately stack source missions for the same commodity so any excess could go straight towards the next one, and so on.
We made 135M in an entire evening of hectic, rapid trading, watching each other getting chased by pirates, me with my SLF and turrets keeping an eye on the interdiction guage in case I had to go dive on the wingmate flying a shieldless cutter, it was fantastic. Most co-op fun I've had in this game for absolutely ages.

Now, if I really wanted to, in the same time, I could probably make that same amount flying solo at my dedicated spot that I go to specifically to make credits. But it wouldn't be anywhere near as fun as teaming up with a bunch of people I've never flown with before for some JOLLY COOPERATION, and frankly - it's a video game. Things that are fun to do should be the things that pay. Otherwise... frankly, credits become a job you do in order to be able to do the things that are fun, and I get enough of that from my real job.

 

[GammaZ]

One thing i am really disappointed about is again, lack of any challenge and balancing by tedium. As exclusively solo player, i was actually quiet interested in this wing missions, as i expected them to be very hard if not impossible to complete solo, and finally become much needed solution to lack of hard pve content. But instead of being difficult, they just require more "numbers"/time to complete. More ships to kill in massacre missions (you still can farm harmless sideys at nav beacon), more cargo to deliver in trade ones, etc... The only mission type i've found so far to have increased difficulty are assassinations, but then... they are still trivially easy, not sure what you are even supposed to do there with whole wing...
Why balance them by simply increasing this numbers even more? Why not make them actually hard to complete, so that wing is actually usefull for anything apart from reducing grind time? I really do not get it...

 

[Hadet]

Before this balance pass, one day last week, a bunch of other players and I were doing it and we were all in T9s and cutters. No noobwinders here, just all four of us in the big end-tier hauling ships doing end-tier hauling, all four of us stacking commodities and checking prices and seeing what missions we could grab next, and you know what? We had a blast. It was great, it was an actual incentive for us to work together. Some missions we could fly out and get them in a single run (2000t goes quick when you've got four ships with two C8 slots each), others we'd deliberately stack source missions for the same commodity so any excess could go straight towards the next one, and so on.
We made 135M in an entire evening of hectic, rapid trading, watching each other getting chased by pirates, me with my SLF and turrets keeping an eye on the interdiction guage in case I had to go dive on the wingmate flying a shieldless cutter, it was fantastic. Most co-op fun I've had in this game for absolutely ages.

Now, if I really wanted to, in the same time, I could probably make that same amount flying solo at my dedicated spot that I go to specifically to make credits. But it wouldn't be anywhere near as fun as teaming up with a bunch of people I've never flown with before for some JOLLY COOPERATION, and frankly - it's a video game. Things that are fun to do should be the things that pay. Otherwise... frankly, credits become a job you do in order to be able to do the things that are fun, and I get enough of that from my real job.

Yeah that's pretty much what i was getting at. It took an evening in a wing full of trade ships to make the "FREE MONEY" that a lot of people are having these weird conceptions about. I'm going to be doing a video on it, I have my Inara profit graphs from the whole time i was doing it, and Lastnigh the results are quite telling, it was still profit sure but not nearly as good.

 

[Hessfire]

I have a great solution for you friend, You personally should not do wing missions with a wing of noobs in Sidewinders then. Also if you were doing 100% of the work with the way they were working before this update you were looking at maybe 5mil in profits because you were buying all the commodities. I feel like the people complaining here never even tried the missions. No one was getting magic free money, the people that were helping noobs were generally losing money by choice to help some new players or friends out. I know Friends are a foreign concept to a lot of you. Some people don't have the time to treat Elite like a Second Job, and their friends were helping them catch up at least in the Asset divide with them. And guess what? It wasn't hurting anyone. If they used that money to buy PvP Ships they still have to Engineer them which is a headache. We were using the money to save up for a Fleet Carrier for the end of the year, a lot of people seem to forget that unlike The Cannon we're not going to magically get handed a Megaship smaller player groups are gonna have to buy them.

The way this was working was pretty simple. People would get 4 wing missions, you'd have one or two guys in Type 9's or Cutters solo'ing their missions while the people in smaller ships worked on the other ones together, when the guys in Type-9's finished their profit margins were worse than doing a solo mission on their mission they were solo'ing but once all four missions were done they made good money. It wasn't this magic 100mil an hour everyone thinks it was more like maybe half that. People were looking at their Inara pages and not actually doing the math themselves. If you were LUCKY You'd get 100mil after a stack was finished but that could take up to 2+ Hours unless literally everyone was in Type-9's., It was also teaching noobs trade and outfitting. We brought in a few guys got them in T6's and T7's and then we walked them through how to find commodities, and what was time effective and what wasn't, and we let them make mistakes with their outfitting to help them learn how to PLAY THE GAME.

A> I get the concept of friends - got plenty of them and I don't have to pay them to play with me.
B> You are talking about the Source and Return Missions, but the straight Haul X tons to Y were paying the same way as I have been saying - Magic Multiplier Money from Heaven
C> How you spend YOUR money is your business, but using Magic Multiplier Money to "teach noobs how to PLAY THE GAME" means you are teaching them how to CHEAT.

And so the cycle continues...

 

[shemmie]

Before this balance pass, one day last week, a bunch of other players and I were doing it and we were all in T9s and cutters. No noobwinders here, just all four of us in the big end-tier hauling ships doing end-tier hauling, all four of us stacking commodities and checking prices and seeing what missions we could grab next, and you know what? We had a blast. It was great, it was an actual incentive for us to work together. Some missions we could fly out and get them in a single run (2000t goes quick when you've got four ships with two C8 slots each), others we'd deliberately stack source missions for the same commodity so any excess could go straight towards the next one, and so on.
We made 135M in an entire evening of hectic, rapid trading, watching each other getting chased by pirates, me with my SLF and turrets keeping an eye on the interdiction guage in case I had to go dive on the wingmate flying a shieldless cutter, it was fantastic. Most co-op fun I've had in this game for absolutely ages.

Now, if I really wanted to, in the same time, I could probably make that same amount flying solo at my dedicated spot that I go to specifically to make credits. But it wouldn't be anywhere near as fun as teaming up with a bunch of people I've never flown with before for some JOLLY COOPERATION, and frankly - it's a video game. Things that are fun to do should be the things that pay. Otherwise... frankly, credits become a job you do in order to be able to do the things that are fun, and I get enough of that from my real job.

It was fun. It was hugely fun. Sat with mates, talking on Discord, comparing prices, checking locations, coordinating our work across T9s and T6s - and the odd gunship to cover our backsides.

It was great fun. It was some of the most fun I've had playing Elite.

I spent 3 hours last night grinding one cargo mission - and apparently, I missed out that the 6300 unit, 300,000+ LS trade job only had a 24 hour timer on it. So despite hauling half of it last night, we got nothing for it.

Not quite as happy, at the moment. It was my fault. It happens. But it was... frustrating.

 

[Icarus Smith]

Wing = playing the game with others ...
Solo = playing the game alone ...

It's pretty damn clear surely

I respect each choice of play style but object to solo players thinking they have some special position on this, if you want the better rewards by playing with others get into Open, wing up, have fun and make money but please don't spout stupid arguments about immersions, rewards or how unfairly you are being treated, because it's a choice.

Wing Missions are the best thing in this game in years, they have been 'balanced' in a way that kills the benefits and hopefully that can be fixed.

If the issue is really "I can't find solo missions as there's too many Wing ones" then that needs to be fixed with another Mission Menu as Passengers.

 

[Hadet]

A> I get the concept of friends - got plenty of them and I don't have to pay them to play with me.
B> You are talking about the Source and Return Missions, but the straight Haul X tons to Y were paying the same way as I have been saying - Magic Multiplier Money from Heaven
C> How you spend YOUR money is your business, but using Magic Multiplier Money to "teach noobs how to PLAY THE GAME" means you are teaching them how to CHEAT.

And so the cycle continues...

I honestly never saw any of the Haul missions. Source and Return we found a lot of. I understand where you're coming from with the Haul missions but the nerf should not have effected Source and Return which were still less profitable than Solo Trading in terms of Credits per Ton unless you have 4 Type-9's at which point they became about 40% more profitable.

I think what we're seeing here is too different arguments being had and people are misunderstanding each other. If that's how Haul missions were working that's insanely bad, but nerfing Wing Missions spawn rates across the board is not how you fix that.

It'd be nice to see Combat Missions with payouts like this, with comparable time spent, as well as even after the nerf it's still faster to do a stack of Source and Returns than a single Massacre mission.

Stacking 4 Elite combat missions you might be looking at a profit of 80 mil when they're all done if they're massacre missions but you'll likely end up hjaving to kill 300+ ships. If you took any solo ones before they popped up you have to finish those first, it's kind of silly.

 

[El_Hefe]

A> I get the concept of friends - got plenty of them and I don't have to pay them to play with me.
B> You are talking about the Source and Return Missions, but the straight Haul X tons to Y were paying the same way as I have been saying - Magic Multiplier Money from Heaven
C> How you spend YOUR money is your business, but using Magic Multiplier Money to "teach noobs how to PLAY THE GAME" means you are teaching them how to CHEAT.

And so the cycle continues...

Except frontier released the code as is,who decides of its a cheat? You?

What cycle is that btw? The one where you have a little mini rant and no one agrees with you? Yeah i can see the cycle alright.

 

[Hadet]

Except frontier released the code as is,who decides of its a cheat? You?

What cycle is that btw? The one where you have a little mini rant and no one agrees with you? Yeah i can see the cycle alright.

Yeah but this kind of implies Frontier is good at testing and balancing, which is not currently true.

Let's not forget the days of 0 Heat SCB Clippers that had instant FSD Reboots, and that was around for almost 2 years

 

[Turbosnowy]

Redacted - I just wish Hessfire would read some counter posts as s/he seems a bit extreme. The current system would work wonders with a proper functioning multiplayer system that sadly doesn't exist but one which I hope one day might.

 

[Screemonster]

Wing = playing the game with others ...
Solo = playing the game alone ...

It's pretty damn clear surely

I respect each choice of play style but object to solo players thinking they have some special position on this, if you want the better rewards by playing with others get into Open, wing up, have fun and make money but please don't spout stupid arguments about immersions, rewards or how unfairly you are being treated, because it's a choice.

Wing Missions are the best thing in this game in years, they have been 'balanced' in a way that kills the benefits and hopefully that can be fixed.

If the issue is really "I can't find solo missions as there's too many Wing ones" then that needs to be fixed with another Mission Menu as Passengers.

Honestly, I play solo/PG most of the time and I wouldn't dream of telling other players that they're wrong and horrible and have an unfair advantage over me if they happen to find a way of playing that lets them progess faster and get a bigger ship than me to fly where the two of us will never cross paths. Someone could have literally a trillion credits in their account and own every ship in the game three times over and it wouldn't affect me one iota.

It's like complaining that the konami code exists in gradius on the SNES. Unless you're showing up on Twitch or something and submitting your high score to some sort of leaderboard, whether you want to play on easy mode doesn't affect me, sitting here possibly several continents away, on an entirely different SNES. I someone wants to play on iron man mode then godspeed, I've got nothing but respect, but the moment they demand that their way is the only way and other people are EXPERIENCING ENJOYMENT INCORRECTLY, is the moment my eyes start rolling into the back of my skull.

 

[Voggix]

A> I get the concept of friends - got plenty of them and I don't have to pay them to play with me.
B> You are talking about the Source and Return Missions, but the straight Haul X tons to Y were paying the same way as I have been saying - Magic Multiplier Money from Heaven
C> How you spend YOUR money is your business, but using Magic Multiplier Money to "teach noobs how to PLAY THE GAME" means you are teaching them how to CHEAT.

And so the cycle continues...

Show us on the doll where the multiplayer game touched you.

 

[Kharakian]

Show us on the doll where the multiplayer game touched you.

Teamwork is cheating, obviously! Clearly all of human civilization is one big cheat because we worked together to make bigger and better things with others instead of scratching in the dirt alone! /S

 

[El_Hefe]

Yeah but this kind of implies Frontier is good at testing and balancing, which is not currently true.

Let's not forget the days of 0 Heat SCB Clippers that had instant FSD Reboots, and that was around for almost 2 years

The part the poster wants changed was not changed though,yet he is implying its a cheat. Yes the rewards and commodity amounts have changed in 3.0.3 but the 4X payment thing remains unchanged. If it was changed that would imply it was unintended but it wasnt. To me that means frontier are happy enough with that element of the missions.

 

[Deareim]

While you are at checking wing missions, please check the Massacre Thargoids ones please.
Because 3.7 ish millions for killing a basilik is not even a joke but a troll.