FDev - mining with SLF still works and there should be punishment for those who abuse it.

[CMDR Cknarf]

The amount of credits another person has in their account has no effect on me whatsoever, so why should I care? Why do you care?

You can still be an Elite billionaire in a day via legitimate means, I don't see why it matters all that much if CMDR Joe blow has 10,000,000,000 or 20,000,000,000

 

[Factabulous]

Part of why this is so frustrating is that FDev have called it an exploit, but so far only in private correspondence with support. It would go a long way if they would make some clear statement in public so that people have certainty one way or the other.

Fdev referred to it as an exploit because the person they were replying to had called it that. It's a common part of language to mirror terms used by someone you are talking to, in order to keep a common framework of terms. They called it a 'bug' once that frame of reference was established.

To me it is an exploit. But let's not put words in fdevs mouth support ticket

 

[Northpin]

Part of why this is so frustrating is that FDev have called it an exploit, but so far only in private correspondence with support. It would go a long way if they would make some clear statement in public so that people have certainty one way or the other.

Basically this...
Make an official statement and warn people about consequences...

Whistle-blowing private correspondence doesn't really count as an official statement

 

[ErichZann]

You're saying its not fixed? Report it then.

Even though it does sounds like it, in this case it really isnt me but a friend of mine. So I am not sure I want to report it if I havent tested it myself. But still I dont think he would lie to me... What do other people experience? Must be thousands trying it...

 

[Gully Foyle]

OP: Put this in as a bug report to give it attention instead of advertising it.

Awww... that's not SLF mining. I haz dissapoint.

I imagined being right up in there !!!! craters lit by subsurface charges with the limpets and everythang!

 

[Sysmon]

The amount of credits another person has in their account has no effect on me whatsoever, so why should I care? Why do you care?

You can still be an Elite billionaire in a day via legitimate means, I don't see why it matters all that much if CMDR Joe blow has 10,000,000,000 or 20,000,000,000

Simple. If credits are the main means for progression in the game, and credits for all progression steps can be gained in no time at all, there is no real progression and we will have the same people whining there is no end game again that were whining about getting FCs as end-game content.

If credit earning is balanced to the other types of progression in the game (combat/exploration ranking, superpower, powerplay, CQC, engineers) then the main indicator of progression falls into place again: Ship progression. Right now there is no need for all those different ship types we have as it takes less than a day to get the funds for the top models. Even fleet carriers don't take long to save up for and they cost nothing significant to run.

This is a game built over scarcity economic principles, but there are no scarcity and therefore no challenge or actual gameplay. Unless you go looking for it by ignoring the exploits and easy ways to get rich.

S

 

[Morbad]

It's not like rich people affect your gameplay experience..

As long as credits have any practical meaning at all they do. FCs have given credits new meaning, and being able to acquire them faster and keep them maintained gives one a tool with potent BGS implications. If anyone else wants to compete on equal terms, they'll want a fleet carrier of their own, which means they'll have to come up with a similar pool of credits.

And yes, the BGS absolutely affects my gameplay experience. It's been one of my main motivators and in-game activities for years now.

It's not like players created the problem by hacking..the opportunity was provided by fdev.

The existence of a flawed mechanism is on Frontier, but exploiting unintended mechanisms is on the exploiter.

do u reset HGEs for materials? do u reset Jameson for data?

No, of course not.

But even if the OP did, hypocrisy wouldn't invalidate any argument.

Fdev referred to it as an exploit because the person they were replying to had called it that. It's a common part of language to mirror terms used by someone you are talking to, in order to keep a common framework of terms. They called it a 'bug' once that frame of reference was established.

To me it is an exploit. But let's not put words in fdevs mouth support ticket

If they called it a bug, that means it's unintended. If someone then leverages it for their advantage, well that's the definition of an exploit, in this context.

 

[schmu666]

As long as credits have any practical meaning at all they do. FCs have given credits new meaning, and being able to acquire them faster and keep them maintained gives one a tool with potent BGS implications. If anyone else wants to compete on equal terms, they'll want a fleet carrier of their own, which means they'll have to come up with a similar pool of credits.

And yes, the BGS absolutely affects my gameplay experience. It's been one of my main motivators and in-game activities for years now.



The existence of a flawed mechanism is on Frontier, but exploiting unintended mechanisms is on the exploiter.



No, of course not.

But even if the OP did, hypocrisy wouldn't invalidate any argument.



If they called it a bug, that means it's unintended. If someone then leverages it for their advantage, well that's the definition of an exploit, in this context.

True, I forgot BGS exists.

Yes, it's an exploit.

I brought up HGEs & Jameson, because they are essentially the same mechanisms and I'd argue that engineering mats give u a bigger advantage than credits.

Still don't think it's a good idea to punish a large portion of the playerbase.

 

[Tharrn]

It's probably impossible to reverse it - after all there is legit ways to mine LTD and I doubt the logs they have can discern whether LTD that were sold were laser mined, core mined or hail from SSD.

 

[jacozilla]

Simple. If credits are the main means for progression in the game, and credits for all progression steps can be gained in no time at all, there is no real progression and we will have the same people whining there is no end game again that were whining about getting FCs as end-game content.

If credit earning is balanced to the other types of progression in the game (combat/exploration ranking, superpower, powerplay, CQC, engineers) then the main indicator of progression falls into place again: Ship progression. Right now there is no need for all those different ship types we have as it takes less than a day to get the funds for the top models. Even fleet carriers don't take long to save up for and they cost nothing significant to run.

This is a game built over scarcity economic principles, but there are no scarcity and therefore no challenge or actual gameplay. Unless you go looking for it by ignoring the exploits and easy ways to get rich.

S

ever since engineering 1.0 came out, and especially v 2.0 with guaranteed incremental improvement rolls, I would argue mats became the new progression currency.

while it is true intro of FCs have made credits finally worth something to some extent, imo it is still not a means of progression because even at the 5B price tag, I’ve calculated and posted the casual player 15 hr a week journey to FC with zero mining is still only ~4 weeks with tritium hauling.

 

[gorankar]

So much angst over someone else's bank account. Lol.
It is too easy, and it should be fixed. But roll back? Naw, just call it another of the many unintended gold rushes the game has had over the years and nerf as usual.
They came out at once and called the fertilizer fiasco an exploit and immediately fixed it. They did not wait a couple weeks to address it.

 

[CMDR Cknarf]

Progression has been borked for years, man.

 

[Florenus]

You took away all the money made with Rockforth Fertiliser and it was clearly exploit you should do the same for those people who abused the SLF method.

Fair enough, but in case of Rockforth Fertiliser they reacted quickly- after a day or so.
In this case this would nullify 2 weeks of playtime. Frontier would not see those people again.

 

[Sysmon]

ever since engineering 1.0 came out, and especially v 2.0 with guaranteed incremental improvement rolls, I would argue mats became the new progression currency.

while it is true intro of FCs have made credits finally worth something to some extent, imo it is still not a means of progression because even at the 5B price tag, I’ve calculated and posted the casual player 15 hr a week journey to FC with zero mining is still only ~4 weeks with tritium hauling.

Mats are capped, credits are not. And of all the progression roads in ED, the credits path is the only one that is not optional. With carriers being ridiculously cheap to run, they represent a milestone only and therefore not really "end game" content.

FD had the opportunity to introduce an "end-game" by keeping FCs expensive to run (but upkeep is ridiculously cheap now, so you can buy one and forget about it). But by allowing them to have money printers installed (UCs with no connection to the BGS) and making tritium the only commodity needed to run them otherwise, they essentially missed the chance to make them actual mobile markets with a need to gather commodities and trade within the BGS to be successful. There was a base management opportunity available there, but not now.

So let's ask to get rid of them again, roll back to before the beta, and FD can then develop them fully and we can test them again in a more viable form.

S

 

[Speedcuffs]

Leave egg respawn exploit.
But open only.

 

[Guyperson]

As far as I am aware, FD have never punished a credit exploit. And really, credits are so abundant that it doesn't matter in the slightest.

No, they sure have. Just off the top of my head there was the Founders World exploit when the game first came out and more recently the fertilizer exploit. They can and have rolled back assets before, and pretty accurately too.

 

[jacozilla]

Mats are capped, credits are not. And of all the progression roads in ED, the credits path is the only one that is not optional. With carriers being ridiculously cheap to run, they represent a milestone only and therefore not really "end game" content.

FD had the opportunity to introduce an "end-game" by keeping FCs expensive to run (but upkeep is ridiculously cheap now, so you can buy one and forget about it). But by allowing them to have money printers installed (UCs with no connection to the BGS) and making tritium the only commodity needed to run them otherwise, they essentially missed the chance to make them actual mobile markets with a need to gather commodities and trade within the BGS to be successful. There was a base management opportunity available there, but not now.

So let's ask to get rid of them again, roll back to before the beta, and FD can then develop them fully and we can test them again in a more viable form.

S

fair enough if that’s your opinion, but everything you said here just reinforces from my POV why mats are the actual progression currency. Like you said:

1. credits are not optional - short of just sitting in space doing nothing, playing -any- aspect of the game will earn you credits. And even if all you do is cheapest data courier missions, with the elevated payouts cranked so high relative to when ship prices were set for all the base plus big ships, a new player will earn enough to skip past entire milestones of ships most veterans had to go through.

2. mats need to be pursued and has caps - unlike credits which are gained and spent universally, specific mats need specific chasing, and with the cap, you can’t just grind X amount like credits and then say ok done, I’m good for next 10 years of FC maintenance,

I would argue for same points above you think credits, I think mats are more the progression currency

 

[XYZ]

So salty but heart

 

[Sysmon]

fair enough if that’s your opinion, but everything you said here just reinforces from my POV why mats are the actual progression currency. Like you said:

1. credits are not optional - short of just sitting in space doing nothing, playing -any- aspect of the game will earn you credits. And even if all you do is cheapest data courier missions, with the elevated payouts cranked so high relative to when ship prices were set for all the base plus big ships, a new player will earn enough to skip past entire milestones of ships most veterans had to go through.

2. mats need to be pursued and has caps - unlike credits which are gained and spent universally, specific mats need specific chasing, and with the cap, you can’t just grind X amount like credits and then say ok done, I’m good for next 10 years of FC maintenance,

I would argue for same points above you think credits, I think mats are more the progression currency

Well, they are both progression currencies. You can't buy ships or modules for mats, though, and the only things you really need in the game are ships and modules. So credits represent the core progress counter. Yet we can get done with the progress they represent in a very short time.

Exploration rank has also been rendered near worthless, as it used to be a counter for how far you had been away from the core systems. Now you can bring the UC with you on a carrier, meaning you can obtain the payout, tags and rank without actually going back to civilisation where the data is supposed to have actual value!

FD seems hellbent on removing any progress and challenge from the game.

S

 

[Morbad]

Still don't think it's a good idea to punish a large portion of the playerbase.

Perhaps, but it has been Frontier's precedent to revert ill-gained assets until relatively recently.

There was a bug right around launch were several CMDRs wound up with, and spent, 4 billion credits (a huge sum then)...Frontier eventually docked it all from their balances. Around the same time it was possible to buy modules at 10% off in Shinrarta, then sell them for full price one jump away; those gains were also reverted. Not long before 3.0 there was the 5-for-1 Engineering exploit which resulted in Frontier removing huge numbers of modules, with no compensation, from many CMDRs. There are several other examples I'm vaguely aware of.

In each case Frontier has reiterated the statement that has always been in the EULA in one form or another, which makes it clear that those who are abusing exploits could face punishment.

They do seem to have been slacking off recently, but that shouldn't be seen as licence to abused obviously unintended mechanisms.