Well, at least the OP uses paragraphs. I would still be tempted to break that down into even smaller blocks and edit out much of the rambling analogies, hypothetical conversations, and overstated reasoning 
Hey don't get wrong, I didn't even make it half way through your thread, I mean you talk about the game being grindy then post that lol.
Not having a go at your viewpoint either (not really) just find it funny how people always start these threads with 'everybody hates this or that' or the classic 'vocal minority or majority' as if they know everyone who's ever played the game.
It's a game, it's got it's ups and downs, who cares?!
Well, at least the OP uses paragraphs. I would still be tempted to break that down into even smaller blocks and edit out much of the rambling analogies, hypothetical conversations, and overstated reasoning
You should see me talk politics and counter conspiracy theorists, it's awful. I try to avoid doing it much anymore for obvious reasons.
Fair enough. You should see me write video game guides
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Yeah, I guess you're right, I'm being very generalizing which isn't a great argument.
... But people do care. Like I said at the end of my OP, people get up in arms over this game for a reason. If it were a strictly bad game, people would just silently quit and not even care enough to suggest revision. If it were a strictly good game, complaints would be few and far between. The forums, reviews, youtube comments, etc, are full of massive debates over this game because it's a game worth caring about. There's not many others like it (except maybe Star Citizen, which has even more management issues), and watching FDEV.... It's like watching Usain Bolt trip right before the finish line or something. Everyone complaining does so because they know it's almost the best game in the world for space simmers, but marred by just a few issues in game design that have stacked up every patch. Everybody has different ideas on how to "fix" it, but one thing's clear, other MMORPGs have pulled it off before, there's no reason FDEV can't come up with fixes that would appeal to the most players possible.
So I read the entire post and I applaud that you went in so much detail. Most of these threads only ever do the TLDR version only, but at least we can see the thinking behind it. And I even agree with a lot of it (not the passenger bit though). The only thing I'm missing from your post is the actual suggestions that help improve the game (in my opinion less grind isn't a valid suggestion, just a criticism).
The passenger missions bit: Passengers don't rent seats but they rent cabins. If I booked a cabin on a boat (not a plane) I wouldn't want other passengers in my cabin. As you mention line flights aren't really a thing in Elite: Dangerous. They could be but that would need a totally different gameplay system.
The passenger missions bit: Passengers don't rent seats but they rent cabins. If I booked a cabin on a boat (not a plane) I wouldn't want other passengers in my cabin. As you mention line flights aren't really a thing in Elite: Dangerous. They could be but that would need a totally different gameplay system.
Fair enough. You should see my write video game guides
Got any links? Some games really need them.
The fact that one can get triple elite in a Sidewinder should say something...
grind is only in the eye of the beholder... and so are the broken things you mention
There's one in my signature
The thing is the people who are happy with the game the way it is are not going to complain until it changes in a way they don't like. You already have it happening now with people complaining about money being to easy, powercreep etc etc...
But... They aren't sharing cabins, that's my main complaint there. Each slot is basically a module with so and so many cabins, like a cargo module has so and so many cargo racks... Isn't it?
... Are those modules really considered the entire "cabin"?.... That's a bit silly isn't it? Like, what, are they all sharing a room? With cots? Even the Luxury ones? Luxury cabin on a cruise ship would get you a room to yourself with a queen size bed. The only one that makes sense really is an economy "cabin" just being a big room full of cots, and... Well, actual passenger liners didn't rent out the entire room of empty cots just so one impoverished guy got some privacy. I thought each slot was its own 1 person cabin.
I guess this is an argument, but this only begs more questions than it answers.
And... Yeah, running lines would need a new gameplay system... One I was hoping would come with passenger missions, since that would give the player a lot of options in how to run their business, just like commodity trading does. FDEV makes content updates all the time, don't see why they couldn't expand on the passenger system, espescially if it makes bulk passengers more viable.
And, no, less grind by itself isn't necessarily a good argument to make... But if I were to sum that up, I would say either "less grind" or "improve gameplay", pick one. People only notice grind when the gameplay loops for it are unsatisfying for whatever reason. I covered a few points why people find gameplay loops unsatisfying, such as there really only being one option to make that many credits, and that's mining... And also how even mining could be made more satisfying, deep core mining being pretty engaging compared to diamond surface mining.
I mentioned how 309 hours felt like a slog just to even get to focussing on engineers. But... I wouldn't even notice things like hours spent in game if I felt those hours were worth my time. For example, I've got 893 hours logged in kerbal space program (and that's not including probably a thousand hours I spent on a pirated version when I was a broke kid). I don't regret a second of it because it's a fantastic game, despite it not even really having a goal of which to speak of. It's just... Satisfying. It's a fun game to play based on physics and creativity.
There are things in this game that are satisfying, but many of them not very rewarding progress wise. And there are other parts of the game that are more rewarding that... Aren't satisfying at all. I guess my goal would be to make the satisfying parts more rewarding, and the rewarding parts satisfying. I would honestly take more grind in this game if the risk/reward at least made more sense.
Hmm... Those are problems worth solving. Powercreep definitely requires ship rebalancing, it seems like there's only a small handful of really good ships despite the wide variety, some of them could be more specialized, and new ships really shouldn't outpace older ones. That's a problem in a lot of games, I practically quit world of tanks because I'd grinding so much down the American tech tree only to be power creeped... And also free to play is a bit cancer.
As for money being easy for late game players, I mean, there's solutions to that. I guess my main complaint is that the credit grind is so specific, there's only really one way to grind it so quickly, and it's just not apparent to newer players. They still come into the game mainly just seeing the slow SLOW grind. There's some potential solutions. For one, perhaps better introduction for new players on game mechanics so they can find something more profitable more quickly. If I'd joined now and had something like low temp diamond mining once I break out of the sidewinder... I could see how that would immediately blow right past early game ships and grind something like an Anaconda pretty quickly, unlike the hundreds of hours I spent. I can understand that being considered a problem, but like I said... Most new players, unless they do research, aren't going to know about that for a VERY long time, and a lot give up and quit before then.
Or you could do something at the other end of the scale, find something to put crap tons of credits towards super late game... Like fleet carriers, lol. Fleet carriers... I think their main issue is the ridiculous amounts of regular maintenance cost, no profit, and not that much benefit. Great, you got a mobile base that's super expensive to run, and turns the game into a second job whooptido. Players don't like feeling like they HAVE to login every week just to upkeep their late game item. That's some phone game crap right there. I suggested some ways to balance that, like give it a ton of upfront costs, but once you have it, and so long as you run it well as a community driven economy, actually turn a small profit of passive income off it from players engaging in transactions aboard your ship. Maybe they could add to that later, like investing billions in starting surface bases and space stations in the far flung reaches of the galaxy, to colonize it.
They could also just make mats and guardian tech for sale, and make the high end stuff ridiculously expensive. Then you could convert all those credits you've already grinded into upgrades you don't want to grind random crap you can't buy for.
Look at how they are graphically represented when you buy them in outfitting. The cheaper ones are beds and the more expensive one are rooms. If you want I can draw up some concepts for passenger lines for a suggestion. I'm kind of intrigued by the idea myself.
These are all valid points, but my question to you would be: What specifically would you want changed to make it less grindy or better gameplay? The more specific a suggestion is the better chance it has of actually being picked up by FDev. Especially if it also has the reasons why attached to it.
TL: DR
I dunno - I didn't make it to the end...
I dunno - I didn't make it to the end...
Hmmm....
Ok. I guess I would suggest aspects of both.... Sorry, I guess it's another book.
1.) All credit earning methods should be relatively close together, so players feel like they have options to go role play however they please without feeling like they're losing out by not doing "more profitable" gameplay they don't like. Mining shouldn't be a magnitude or two more than combat, for example. And I think maybe the best credit earning method shouldn't really exceed 40-60 million an hour, maybe less. I think the worst method should be only about 30-50% as much as the best method, ideally. That seems like a fair spread. With the exception of PVP bounties. I heard there's caps on that? Dumb. Give the player the bounty he earned already. You can't try to make player based economies, and then try to reign it in in overbearing ways like that. Hell, giving the full reward might encourage small fry players to take their chances in PVP.
2.) Risk vs reward is key. Combat on average nets the best income, next would be exploration, next trading, passenger, and mining. Again, these aren't THAT far apart, you should still make an ok income doing mining or trading.
3.) Even in these gameplay loops, there should be smaller risk/reward decisions, and the riskier stuff should require some level of player skill. Some of this is already in the game, like giving the player threat levels for combat zones so they can decide whether or not to engage for potentially higher bounties. Now, bare in mind, I don't have much experience with combat or PVP, I've mostly been non-combat grinding up till recently for a better combat ship. I think the most profitable should be thargoid encounters, or taking a side in a capital ship engagement. Other good examples are also in the game, like running fugitive passenger missions, or black market cargo, etc, these should all run significantly more profit. And deep core mining should definitely be worth more per hour than surface mining. Surface mining is a pretty brain dead activity that doesn't require much planning or execution. Surface mining should still have its place if you really want the least risky possible approach, but it just shouldn't pay as much. And exploration... Hmmm... What about really dangerous scans? Like dropping inside the exclusion zone of a pulsar to grab scan data, and selling for a massive profit, while also giving future explorers a 20% buff to FSD boosting there for a few weeks, or using a fuel scoop to direct sample the upper atmosphere of earth like worlds?
4.) Well... I used to have this idea of making a risk/reward game out of FSD jumps so they aren't so... brain dead. Once you've dropped in, fuel scooped, and jumped out a million times, it gets old. I guess there is SOME gameplay to be had outside the bubble avoiding sparse star regions. I had this idea that, you could attempt to make really long jumps beyond the max jump range of your ship, but to do so, you would have to fly increasingly difficult "interdict" scenarios, and if you fail, get dumped with FSD damage in the middle of nowhere after spending a ton of fuel... I think Guardian FSD drives already upset the jump range balance for that though, I've seen one video where a guy managed to eat his FSD drive pulsar boosting to over 300 lightyears. Who knows, maybe this idea still has a place given the jump range of fleet carriers.
5.) Other uses for a fighter bay? Much like passenger missions, fighters felt like a let down, I thought it'd be cool to turn ships with lots of internals into fighter carriers. I see why they didn't add launching everything though. It'd make the Beluga or Type 9 viable as combatants weirdly, but the anaconda, corvette, and cutter would turn into absolute overpowered monsters, dumping 12 fighters on top of their weapons. I could see perhaps a dropship that takes up a lot more hanger space than a fighter? It could carry a small amount of cargo, and land on small landing pads, or take an SRV down to a planet's surface, or use mining lasers for more multicrew fun. This would add a lot of other utility to the module.
6.) Ship combat rebalance? I know that's a long standing issue. Not sure how best to go about it, I'm only just getting into high end combat, yet to engineer out my ships.
7.) Read above post for end game ideas to spend your billions on, if you're finding credits "too easy".
8.) So, ED has all these tools in game nobody seems to use that's meant for you to ferret out your own trade routes. 3rd party tools already make the game a lot quicker to play by allowing you to make ship builds before you pull the trigger on buying one, allow you to find the best trade routes automatically, allow you to find the nearest locations to buy specific modules for ships, etc etc etc... Personally, I know I'd use my VR headset on this game a lot more if I could just use a stock in-game version of those tools. Might as well add those since most of the experienced player base avail themselves of it anyway.
9.) Yeah, player passenger lines. If you have ideas on how to go about that, I'm all ears. It'd offer a lot of role play options the current passenger mission system doesn't really offer. You feel like some rich 's B**** rather than an upstanding cruise line captain. I'd like to be in control of where I go for passenger missions, partly diven by a supply/demand market (much like commodities), and partly based on my choice in direction.
10.) Honestly.... Just more options to customize your experience. I think adding more player/player interaction would go a long way to making the game's universe more lively. Actual player financial transaction would be nice. Like I said, the restrictions don't really stop me from dumping millions on my sidewinder friend, it just makes it more annoying with extra steps. The ability to decide as the captain what cut my crew gets in multi-crew would be nice too. You don't really feel like the captain of your enterprise when the game is like "Nope, 10%, that's all you can give your friend". I've always liked the idea of starting your own guild or company in the game, expanding on resource management, It started off with the idea of advertising your own passenger routes to NPCs, and I was like... Wait a minute... You could add this for every aspect of the game, start a company doing whatever you do. Mining? Company. Shipping? Company. Combat? Mercenary group. You advertise and offer contracts to the NPCs, instead of them always giving you the contracts.
And then you can expand this to multiplayer. Oh no, what ever shall I do with my way too easy to earn billions? I dunno, start a company, invest in hiring NPC players (or better yet, real players) to do your bidding. Go start powerplay wars with your mercenaries, or war directly with competing companies over mining or trade turf... FDEV is trying to move over to a player controlled economy? Maybe they should go whole hog if it's going to work well.
You could be a bank, hand out ship loans, but you could lose your money on a quitter, or bad gamer who keeps losing their ship, repo the ship at a loss, so it's up to players to prove they're a good investment, and the bankers to take good bets over bad, and maybe educate new players so they actually make good on their ship. There's a lot of stuff you could do with this, and it would add so many late game options.
Like I stated in my OP, this is already done in spite of FDEV not implementing the necessary framework, with groups like the fuel rats. And they're kinda implementing something that could really use this kind of gameplay to make viable... Fleet carriers. Fleet carriers could make excellent player controlled micro economies. Run well, they turn a profit, essentially passively, and maintain their own upkeep. Run poorly, they run at a loss. It adds a level of late game economics the player can partake in... I dunno, maybe it's sounding too much like EVE online at this point? Is that something people even want in ED given how inaccessible and toxic EVE can be? I could see ways this could bring the community together just as much as drive it apart. For example, with full bounties being rewarded in PVP, a company of smaller mercenaries could take on big time bounties in large numbers. And fleet carriers could become exploration hubs far away from the bubble, providing necessary services to explorers in a profitable exchange with the ship owner. And if it generates some EVE level hijinks, for all that game's toxic faults, it does generate some amazing stories. Have you heard of the Fountain War? I know FDEV probably wouldnt want to go this deep with the player controlled economy, but at least SOMETHING would be nice. Something that doesn't involve just 10% share multicrew, wings, and dumping cargo to your bud. Some more player/player interactions that doesn't always involve shooting each other, or helping someone shoot each other, would be cool.
I dunno. There's a million ways you could do this kinda stuff. These are just my ideas, I've heard a lot of competing ones over the years I'd think could do well too.
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Great! Now we´re getting somewhere !
Balancing earning potential over the different professions is generally what all commanders want (except for the get rich quick crowd). Up until the mining update FDev at least tried to balance the complex earning potentials, but they've been reluctant of making changes lately. My gut feeling tells me that the Next Era update is going to shake things up in the balance department.
While I understand your risk vs. reward argument, I reckon several careers (explorers, traders, miners, passengers) don't want combat or death to be the risk. What risk/reward mechanisms should be used instead, is an interesting question. FDev already added a little more risk/reward for FSD jumping by introducing neutron star boosts. Adding an optional additional layer of gameplay would be a nice way to expand on the risk/reward of travelling, but I suspect that would be a major undertaking for FDev (changes to route plotting come to mind).
As for the use of external tools, I agree. It's fantastic that they exist, but an in game solution would be preferable.
And finally your point about player/player interaction. Over the years FDev have done a lot of work to increase player/player interactions (multicrew, wing missions, squadrons, fleet carriers). Not all of them meet player expectations, but they have been working on it.
Final note: I'll post a suggestion on passenger lines in a couple of days.
!Balancing earning potential over the different professions is generally what all commanders want (except for the get rich quick crowd). Up until the mining update FDev at least tried to balance the complex earning potentials, but they've been reluctant of making changes lately. My gut feeling tells me that the Next Era update is going to shake things up in the balance department.
While I understand your risk vs. reward argument, I reckon several careers (explorers, traders, miners, passengers) don't want combat or death to be the risk. What risk/reward mechanisms should be used instead, is an interesting question. FDev already added a little more risk/reward for FSD jumping by introducing neutron star boosts. Adding an optional additional layer of gameplay would be a nice way to expand on the risk/reward of travelling, but I suspect that would be a major undertaking for FDev (changes to route plotting come to mind).
As for the use of external tools, I agree. It's fantastic that they exist, but an in game solution would be preferable.
And finally your point about player/player interaction. Over the years FDev have done a lot of work to increase player/player interactions (multicrew, wing missions, squadrons, fleet carriers). Not all of them meet player expectations, but they have been working on it.
Final note: I'll post a suggestion on passenger lines in a couple of days.
No, it is a hat tip to the same 20 or so that pee all over posts that they find are not Fdev deferential.
Great! Now we´re getting somewhere
Balancing earning potential over the different professions is generally what all commanders want (except for the get rich quick crowd). Up until the mining update FDev at least tried to balance the complex earning potentials, but they've been reluctant of making changes lately. My gut feeling tells me that the Next Era update is going to shake things up in the balance department.
While I understand your risk vs. reward argument, I reckon several careers (explorers, traders, miners, passengers) don't want combat or death to be the risk. What risk/reward mechanisms should be used instead, is an interesting question. FDev already added a little more risk/reward for FSD jumping by introducing neutron star boosts. Adding an optional additional layer of gameplay would be a nice way to expand on the risk/reward of travelling, but I suspect that would be a major undertaking for FDev (changes to route plotting come to mind).
As for the use of external tools, I agree. It's fantastic that they exist, but an in game solution would be preferable.
And finally your point about player/player interaction. Over the years FDev have done a lot of work to increase player/player interactions (multicrew, wing missions, squadrons, fleet carriers). Not all of them meet player expectations, but they have been working on it.
Final note: I'll post a suggestion on passenger lines in a couple of days.
Yeah, I hope the next era update renders all of this moot, but I doubt it given past experiences. The gap in the proffessions really should be closed, and the potential reward should match the risk. I could even see there be options for the get rich quick crowd I think, but those options should more than likely get your ship destroyed.
Risk vs reward doesn't always have to include death. Deep core mining is a perfect example of this, you'd have to be pretty dumb to damage your ship getting too close to an asteroid about to detonate. BUT, there is a risk you're going to mess up your charge yield, and being too cautious means chewing through your ammo a lot quicker. Don't do it right, and you don't make nearly as much.
And yeah, it would take some effort to add routing for increased FSD jumps. I would imagine it something like, go into the galaxy map view screen, and lets say your ship has a 40ish LY jump range, and you think doing 60 LY jumps is about where your pilot skill is to navigate the interdiction scenario that follows. You could tell the plotter to go 20 LY over, and it'll plot based on 60 LY jumps instead of 40. Bare in mind the other downside to this is chewing through way more fuel, meaning paying even more attention to scoop stars, and should you mess up and get dumped in interstellar space, might be a good idea to take along an extra fuel tank in case that happens.
I'll have have to try out these advisor tools when I'm in VR. Usually I end up just using the 3rd party tools for this stuff either way because they have information covering the entire bubble, from other players.
And they have been making good strides in improving player interaction... But it's still very limited economy wise. There's a lot of untapped potential there. And if they really want to move over to player based economy, and community driven end goals like expensive fleet carriers... Maybe they should stop avoiding player/player financial interaction like the plague.
I feel this has more to do with credits being one of the progression systems (as has been the case for past Elite games). For single players games this is not a problem, but as soon as credits can be transferred from other players, this progression mechanic doesn't work properly.
The current player progression systems are (non transferrable items):
- Assets/Credits (although after fleet carriers this is going to be problematic).
- Materials.
- Explorer, trading, combat ranks.
- Military ranks (federation, imperial).
- Faction reputations.
- Engineer reputations.
- Technology brokers.