Combat is high-risk due to the rebuy cost (that's a fact)
Risk is penalty combined with the odds of that penalty being inflicted. Neither small, frequent penalties, nor virtually unheard of, extreme penalties, constitute much in the way of risk.
The odds of seeing a rebuy in PvE combat for someone vaugely experienced in combat, who isn't deliberately trying to maximize risk, is essentially zero.
I'll just enjoy being poor..?
60-70% of my CMDR's lifetime earnings come from combat and he doesn't feel particularly poor to me. I suppose he is in relative terms, but he's also way past the point where credits are significantly valuable.
I don't see any combat veterans disagreeing with him. I don't think a combat veteran ever would.
How many thousands of CMDRs and tens of thousands of NPCs does my CMDR have to shoot down before he's an ED combat veteran again?
The argument that difficult tasks should pay slightly more than less difficult tasks always comes from those who want to get paid more for challenges. It's that simple. They want motivation to step up their game. If one disagrees, they simply want the opposite.
I do think it makes sense for difficult tasks to command higher wages, but don't agree that doing something difficult should automatically command a reward. I can do all sorts of very difficult real world tasks (wiggle my ears, while moving DOS drivers/TSRs into the optimal HMA segment to maximize free conventional memory, and reciting obscure AD&D trivia, all simultaneously, for example) that, no matter how proud I am of my hard-earned abilities, command a zero wage because they are things no one particularly needs done or gives a damn about. Same premise would apply to a significant portion of combat in ED...wanting to look for a fight is one thing, expecting someone to pay top dollar for you to do so is quite another.
My main gripe is with the idea that most combat, when in a combat focused vessel, especially PvE stuff, in ED is difficult or risky. By the time one's CMDR is well regarded enough to command a decent wage for combat, one should have the skills to eliminate it's risks, as they currently are.
In any case, credits aren't a motivation for my CMDR to step up his game. Add another zero to the end of his bank balance and nothing changes for me or him. The existence of more credible threats, and not purely inflationary ones, would be a far better motivation.
You think you're some kind of combat pro and don't see what the risk is about.
You don't even need to be particularly good at combat. Even in the case of PvP, which we well know is phenomenally more risky than fighting NPCs, everything is slanted in favor of survival...someone who doesn't want to get shot down is going to escape the overwhelming majority of the time, even when heavily outnumbered by clearly superior pilots in clearly superior vessels. For every CMDR I've shot down, twenty have escaped via various methods. For every PvP fight where I've lost a ship I've successfully fled from hundreds more...at least on live, where I'm playing a character who isn't suicidal.
I think the last NPC fight (where I wasn't deliberately handicapping myself) where I came close to losing a ship was back in 1.1 or early 1.2 when I was in a 'gold trap' USS that spawned eight Vultures against my lone Viper Mk III.
Maybe the perception of risk is greater for those who always insist on fighting until they or their enemies have been destroyed, or those who habitually phone in their gameplay while distracted with something else...but that's not a risk intrinsic to the gameplay.
I'll agree with that!
