Dear FDEV, Can we re-balance how ARX are earned

GraXXoR

GraXXoR
My second account CMDR Rick Sanchez is about 15kylies out from Begle Point in his T7. I usually do between 20 and 50 jumps per session (the rest of the time is scanning WW/AW/ELW and Terraformables... I try to limit this guy to two hours per session before logging in as Graxxor. I'm currently getting about 3 Arx per two hours, 50 systems and 100-200 scans. To achieve my 400 ARX cap I would have to play for about 250 hours per week.
 
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zimms

zimms
GraXXoR said:
My second account CMDR Rick Sanchez is about 15kylies out from Begle Point in his T7. I usually do between 20 and 50 jumps per session (the rest of the time is scanning WW/AW/ELW and Terraformables... I try to limit this guy to two hours per session before logging in as Graxxor. I'm currently getting about 3 Arx per two hours, 50 systems and 100-200 scans. To achieve my 400 ARX cap I would have to play for about 250 hours per week.
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But you have to remember those 250 hours are free!
 

Shaele

Shaele
So I got to the end of a leg in my journey and there is a base to land at and as its coming up to the weekly reset I decided to get some final stats on my ARX earnings for the week
Systems visited: 620 systems scanned, many planets probed, 6+ space anomalies visited
ARX earned: 263

Sell 1 page of data (50 systems, 48m of data)
ARX earned: 137+ with probably some overflow (screen only shows to the weekly maximum)

so unless you are willing to hold onto your data explorers get screwed coming and going
You would need around 1k systems scanned out in the black to earn your weekly max of ARX.
When you get back to sell you need to hold onto that data for 3 weeks to get full return on it.

This is a clear imbalance for long term explorers.
 

Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
GraXXoR said:
My second account CMDR Rick Sanchez is about 15kylies out from Begle Point in his T7. I usually do between 20 and 50 jumps per session (the rest of the time is scanning WW/AW/ELW and Terraformables... I try to limit this guy to two hours per session before logging in as Graxxor. I'm currently getting about 3 Arx per two hours, 50 systems and 100-200 scans. To achieve my 400 ARX cap I would have to play for about 250 hours per week.
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Straight exploration Honk/Scan gives pretty poor Arx Earned, Mapping improves it marginally, but surface mining on Bio (probably Geo too) adds a noticable amount earned (don't think 'lots' - it isn't). This conclusion reached from a recent trip out to BP and visiting every Bio site discovered. There are quite a few Crystalline Spires not too far from Beagle :)
 

lenna

lenna
Shaele said:
Just messing around I did 13 assassination and massacre missions ingame, total of around 35 pirate ships to kill.
...
I turn the missions in and log to the menu screen and got a total of 13 ARX.
...
I logged to the menu and had earnt another 80 ARX. 4 time more arx for playing a inventory management grind
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I do agree that does sound at least a little off. FD did declare that they did not want the free ARX to change the way we all played the game so perhaps they need to look into how ARX are earned and make it more appropriate.

However, the free ARX should be seen as just being a bonus rather than a reward. Not sure how I would balance it personally in order to keep it fair and balanced, it certainly is a tricky thing to answer.

Perhaps you could propose how you personally think it should be balanced?
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
Just switched back to my explorer account on Monday, decided to head back from Acheron to Colonia (I want a SC-assist module for easier DSS).

Travelled pretty fast, honking, FSS resolving mostly only WW/ELW/AW. DSS scanned a handful. Still not reached Colonia, so no docking, though I blasted through a few sectors so got some stellar codex discoveries and a couple of planet-base ones.

So after 3 days exploring:

1578526535980.png


Higher than I expected given the threads like this 🤷‍♀️ Now to log off and wait for the ARX reset tomorrow and then continue, hope to get to start selling data next 'week' :D
 

Eahlstan

E
rlsg said:
I do agree that does sound at least a little off. FD did declare that they did not want the free ARX to change the way we all played the game so perhaps they need to look into how ARX are earned and make it more appropriate.

However, the free ARX should be seen as just being a bonus rather than a reward. Not sure how I would balance it personally in order to keep it fair and balanced, it certainly is a tricky thing to answer.

Perhaps you could propose how you personally think it should be balanced?
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Well as you said, we were told that we don't have to change the way we play to earn ARX.
While it might be true that I earn ARX the way I play (scanning whole systems and mapping ELWs and AWs) I doubt that there is a reasonable way to get to 400 ARX per week doing exploration.
I explored an average of about 6.5 hours a day last week and I barely got more than 200 ARX. I believe that most players don't have the time to invest that much time, therefore exploration is a 'no go' right now if you want to get a decent amount of ARX.
On the other side: If I'd fly to a station and sell my data to UC I would make serveral hundreds ARX (capped at 400) by clicking the 'sell data' button for less than an hour.

Maybe it would be better to award ARX while actually exploring and none for selling the data.
 

lenna

lenna
Eahlstan said:
Maybe it would be better to award ARX while actually exploring and none for selling the data.
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I think I have suggested something akin to that in another thread on this general topic.

What seems to be the model adopted by FD is 1 ARX per notional transaction or a certain part there of. Mission completion seems to be 1 ARX per mission completed based on the annecdotal evidence from the OP. Trading and bounties are bound to be at least a little more complicated to balance appropriately.

Where exploration is concerned, I agree that the ARX should probably be awarded at point of scan rather than at point of handing in - but only for completely new scans (i.e. notional First Discoveries and unveiling of previously unknown bodies). No additional ARX for multiple scans of the same body.

A more elegant way without changing the means of awarding ARX would be to implement a roll over scheme so that on average no more than 400 ARX per week is awarded but so that you could potentially earn 1600 ARX in one week after earning no ARX for the preceding 3 weeks (for example). How far such a roll-over should go would be a potential point of concern.
 

Eahlstan

E
rlsg said:
A more elegant way without changing the means of awarding ARX would be to implement a roll over scheme so that on average no more than 400 ARX per week is awarded but so that you could potentially earn 1600 ARX in one week after earning no ARX for the preceding 3 weeks (for example). How far such a roll-over should go would be a potential point of concern.
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That would have to be a massive amount of time (I'd say a year) as explorers tend to be away from stations for several month, or even more than a year.
 

lenna

lenna
Eahlstan said:
That would have to be a massive amount of time (I'd say a year) as explorers tend to be away from stations for several month, or even more than a year.
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Perhaps, but it is one potential approach - I understand what FD were trying to do though. Award ARX for interacting with the game in a notionally meaningful way - i.e. presumably contributing to the BGS. This premise was good (in theory) but they seem to have missed the mark a bit.

There are really no easy answers for this that will necessarily appease everyone unless they effectively hand out the ARX like water regardless of what people do - something I think they were trying to avoid I think.
 

Eahlstan

E
rlsg said:
unless they effectively hand out the ARX like water regardless of what people do - something I think they were trying to avoid I think.
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There's a difference between bathing people in ARX and forcing players to play about 100 hours a week to get to the cap.
I have the feeling that they simply forgot about long time exploration. Before I headed out to my current exploration trip I made the last 70% of my elite trader rank. That week I played significantly less than last week and had no problem earning 400 ARX. I don't know about fighting playstyle though as I avoid fights at all cost (neither my ASP nor my T9 have weapons).
 

B.Roberts

B.Roberts
I'm confused with this entire debate, really. There is always somebody not happy, it happens all the time and there is no way you can make everybody happy. Things too easy to get, things too difficult to get, too many things, not enough things and so forth. Even when we get some free things we still not happy because we getting free things not the way we want. Does it really matters how and why we getting these free ARXes? What is it ? I mean, people were playing this game for years without this stuff and nobody ever complained about cosmetics being this or being that and overnight it got blown out of proportion. I paid for all my paintjobs with the real money or with the ARXes that I bought with real money and paying very little attention to those free ones that I get while doing my own things in the game. If I get some free stuff - I'll take it, if I don't get free stuff - not a big deal either.
 

Red Anders

Red Anders
GraXXoR said:
My second account CMDR Rick Sanchez is about 15kylies out from Begle Point in his T7. I usually do between 20 and 50 jumps per session (the rest of the time is scanning WW/AW/ELW and Terraformables... I try to limit this guy to two hours per session before logging in as Graxxor. I'm currently getting about 3 Arx per two hours, 50 systems and 100-200 scans. To achieve my 400 ARX cap I would have to play for about 250 hours per week.
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I'm on my way back from Beagle at the moment. I couldn't give you an exact figure for jumps but since last week's Arx cap reset I've covered about 11K LY crossing The Abyss, where star density is so low below the galactic plane where I'm flying that your jump path looks like one of those games where you try to draw something without taking your pen off the paper :D

In the last two days alone I've fully scanned over 50 systems, including mapping 2 ELW, about 7 WW and over 40 terraformables. Seriously, it's been like 5 in one system, 3 in the next, then we hit a single star system then oh look, another 4. I've never had a run like it.

Total Arx earned for the week. 85. I have no words.

B.Roberts said:
I'm confused with this entire debate, really. There is always somebody not happy, it happens all the time and there is no way you can make everybody happy. Things too easy to get, things too difficult to get, too many things, not enough things and so forth. Even when we get some free things we still not happy because we getting free things not the way we want. Does it really matters how and why we getting these free ARXes? What is it ? I mean, people were playing this game for years without this stuff and nobody ever complained about cosmetics being this or being that and overnight it got blown out of proportion. I paid for all my paintjobs with the real money or with the ARXes that I bought with real money and paying very little attention to those free ones that I get while doing my own things in the game. If I get some free stuff - I'll take it, if I don't get free stuff - not a big deal either.
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Depends what you mean by 'matter' really.

Am I going to throw myself off Blackpool Tower over it? Nope.

Do I think it's a bit off that when the game is giving out Arx, which I would otherwise have to buy for real cash if I want to buy cosmetic items, they can't balance it a bit better to avoid some playstyles getting virtually nothing for 15 hours of gameplay whilst others can cap out in a couple of hours? Yeah I do actually.
 
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Eahlstan

E
B.Roberts said:
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Well, I don't care about ARX. But they tell people that they don't have to change the way they play and then they implement it in a way that forces people to change the way they play if they don't want to get significantly less than people with other play styles. That ist just wrong. They have all the statistics they News, there has to be a way to even it out so that players in avarage get the same amount of ARX per action or minute regardless if they explore, trade, fight or mine.
 
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Kelster87

Kelster87
Captain Willard said:
No one is being forced to change their game play.
I surely won't, no matter how much or how little I get doing this or that. It's free.
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Similarly, I'm on the outbound leg of an exploration trip at the moment, somewhere about 7k out from Sol, and when I get back, I will almost certainly sell all the data in the 1st station with an appropriate controlling faction. Yes, I'll max out my 400 Arx for the week.. Who cares. I've recently been doing my 400 a week just floating around doing a variety of things, a bit of trading, bit of bounty hunting, bit of mining, run a bunch of missions, gain a little rank.. And that seems to be the secret, the more variety in my activities, the more Arx I seem to earn - excepting the large payouts from Map data and some mining..
 
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