ANNOUNCEMENT Game Balancing

[Edmund Black]

Good answer! Your power is lucky to have you, respect.

Thing is how can anything profound change in Elite such as OOPP without causing a major community meltdown? How can modes be separated without denying aspects of the game to other players, it’s a hard thing to get right.

I think (speaking for myself) a lot of issues are the RL players that a hell bent on ruining the experience for others - and by that I don’t mean PvP powerplay - but the other type, you only have to take a look at the seal clubbing going on near the starter systems to see what I mean in action.

Anyway, you have a point - and it’s made me think a little harder on my stance on the issue.

You can check out our suggestions, we have put a lot of thought to make sure we do not ruin anyone's game style, so we suggested incremental changes, a lot of these suggestions are also the same that Sandro (the lead designer of Powerplay) suggested as well, we took into consideration modules and the personal gain of CMDRs want to play in solo or PG, so that they get the merits but without affecting the power itself, you can see the full list of suggestions in the Original Post that links to all the suggestions here:

Pull Your Fingers Out - Incrementally Improving PowerPlay

Greetings CMDRs, We in the Powerplay community want to try again to push for change. We are fed up with how Frontier have been ignoring us and punishing us for playing Powerplay - yes, that is how the majority of us feel - that we are being punished for trying to play what was supposed to be...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[aRJay]

1. What or who is this community the completion of these goals benefits? What would I gain from doing something that benefits this unknown community other than making a profit (if I only could make any from it)?
2. Like I said, I don't like the idea of some kind of endgame. And I also don't like it that there isn't really anything fun to do in ED. It comes down to making money, wich is ridiculously difficult --- after a year, I still haven't found any reasonable way to make money and no fun way that would pay reasonably well --- and engineering. Unfortunately, engineering is an endless, repetetive grind which is, unfortunately, unavoidable if you want to get anywhere. Being so repetitive takes all the fun out of engineering. And that doesn't even touch the total lack of information that makes the game such a PITA to play ...
3. So at the end of the day, what you get out of playing ED is mostly frustration --- and perhaps anger because it could be such a great game if only ...

1. The players and NPCs they interact with. Why do something for no reward, for the satisfaction of doing it and getting involved, if that isn’t enough for you do something else.
2. From my perspective there are lots of enjoyable things to do in Elite and I do some of them and switch to doing different ones as the mood takes me. Currently I am doing the only sort of passenger mission I will touch rescuing people from a burning station and generally selecting ones that let me pick up stuff for engineering instead of credits. I am sure I miss a lot of stuff due to lack of information but as most of the time I don’t know what I have missed I don’t fret about it too much.
3. I don’t get those things out of Elite maybe because I accept it for what it is now not for what I wish it could be.

 

[27δ(duuude)]

Open BGS and powerplay combined with better PvP combat balancing would solve a lot of problems for people who prefer player interaction over profit. I can see bigger player bounties and bigger powerplay kill rewards being balanced with a more populated open play space. The main reason PvP related rewards are so small is because of "boosting" which happens in every game but can be "self-regulated" by the rest of the player base (hopefully). Similar to hacker hunters going after botfarmers in other games, seems to work for games like runescape.

Edit: Would probably require some sort of open only bounty system specifically for players, but the concerns about effecting the BGS via boosting would also be self regulating.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

So we can say that there are a lot of Cmdrs who got outrageously rich, because the game is out of balance ?

It's quite scandalous and unequal for the new entrants.

I propose to reset all accounts and start over when the game is balanced.

If all the First tags get removed too, I'm OK with this.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Why this confusion of skill and speed? Elite is more chess than checkers.

S

And, here I am, a poker player.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

So for giggles, I went and mined for an hour in a prisitne metallic non-hotspot. I didn't bother reverse PWA-ing which yielded some roids but w/e... this was plain old vanilla laser mining.

The caveat was I didn't ignore any asteroids. I simply prospected and took what I got.

The end result was:
26t Indite (avg 2232)
13t Osmium (avg 17139)
18t Platinum (avg 42495)
14t Gold (avg 9847)
9t Praesodymium (avg 8619)
9t Bertrandite (avg 2517)
41t Samarium (avg 15119)
35t Gallite (avg 2694)
43t Palladium (avg 12953)

Total Profits: 1,797,242

Look at some of those items. Platinum, Gold, Palladium, Osmium. How much Painite would someone get in an hour? 100m worth?

I haven't even got enough to fulfil a mission here of anything. That kinda tells you how out of whack things are.

Ahhh, Indite, Bertrandite, and Gallite. My favorites.

 

[limpetdwarf]

[...]
All the whiners constantly harping on about "you don't need the bigger ships or lots of credits, why can't you just enjoy the game" are wilfully ignoring the fact that Frontier have provided the player with almost no meaningful progression beyond "owning bigger ships and having lots of credits". Making your own fun is fine up to a point but it's not blasphemy to expect more of an actual game to arrive eventually, especially if Frontier want us to keep buying expansions and cosmetics.

Exactly! For the record, I do like the bigger ships much more than the smaller ones (and they should have much larger jump ranges). Trying those out is one of the few things that are fun for me. Unfortunately, doing that requires huge amounts of money, and that is something impossible to get. On top of that, engineering kinda defeats it all because the effort it would require to do it thouroughly is way beyond any reasonable limit, and I'm not willing to do stupid repetitive tasks over and over again. A game should be fun to play and not some kind of punishment.

Why aren't the engineers supplying the required materials? If I had to supply crude oil from my drilling rig and steel wires manufactured by my factories from the ore I dug from my mines and whatever else may be needed, I would never put better tires on my car because it would never be feasible.

 

[Sysmon]

And, here I am, a poker player.

I prefer golf, but hey...

S

 

[limpetdwarf]

You rejoice in the fact that you are relatively immune to market fluctuations as you have nothing in storage and can do things you enjoy.

If there was a good economy simulation that would make sense and if we had appropriate effects on the economy, I might rejoice because I might be able to build up a trading empire eventually or at least make some money with trade. Until then, I'm at best frustrated by the total randomness of the economy and by the depreciation I'm experiencing in that selling prices at a place may go down just because I have some cargo the demand for which is relatively low at that place. How do they even know what cargo I have unless they scanned me, and how do I shield my cargo containers against their scans? If you have that cargo in your carrier, does that lower the selling prices throughout the system your carrier is in because you could sell it somewhere there? Do they even scan your carrier to figure out what cargo you have? Why are the unaffordable carriers the only ships that allow players to carry more than tiny amounts of cargo?

I've seen lots of carriers around, though, and I can only wonder how anyone get that much money to buy and keep one. So perhaps yet again reducing selling prices for minerals could simply be an attempt to keep the number of carriers at bay because there are now too many of them and it's causing performance or other issues. At least it would explain why it's about these prices rather than about changes that would actually make for improvements.

Meanwhile, in case you have things in storage that are preventing you from doing things you enjoy, it might be a good idea to sell these things and perhaps sell the carrier, too

 

[limpetdwarf]

While I usually don't post, I have to ask.

Have you ever explored? Or played with friends? Or gone to Hutton or Beagle? Or even just to Colonia? Have you interacted with PowerPlay at all? Have you engaged with this game beyond "Credits shiny"?

I haven't really explored because it takes ages to get to places that haven't already been explored yet. How many thousands of LYs do you have to go for that?

I haven't really played with friends. I'm not a peoples person, everyone is way ahead of me and has engineered their ships already and is not interested in doing anyhing; I strongly dislike wearing headphones and chatting via keyboard isn't really an option; most players don't seem to be friendly anyway, and it's not something I'm really interested in, either.

What is Hutton or Beagle?

I've heared about Colonia, and there is no way to get there because it's 20k LYs away. Even after lots of tedious engineering, that's at least 400 jumps. What are the chances that I would surive trying to get there, and why would I want to go there?

I've signed up to get prismatic shields and quit playing before getting any. What's the point of this power play? It's not like I could actually do anything, could I? I even joined a squadron and was told they are doing power play, and yet noone could explain to me what the point of it is.

I was forced to read and write a lot of forum posts, wiki pages and the like and had to search for information because there is a total lack of information in the game. I expect the information required to play a game to be found within the game and/or to be provided with good documentation. It's one of the very big issues with ED that it's effectively unplayable due to a lack of information. I didn't want to spend time on trying to find and read information, I just wanted to play.

 

[D.D.Hariman]

You can check out our suggestions, we have put a lot of thought to make sure we do not ruin anyone's game style, so we suggested incremental changes, a lot of these suggestions are also the same that Sandro (the lead designer of Powerplay) suggested as well, we took into consideration modules and the personal gain of CMDRs want to play in solo or PG, so that they get the merits but without affecting the power itself, you can see the full list of suggestions in the Original Post that links to all the suggestions here:

Pull Your Fingers Out - Incrementally Improving PowerPlay

Greetings CMDRs, We in the Powerplay community want to try again to push for change. We are fed up with how Frontier have been ignoring us and punishing us for playing Powerplay - yes, that is how the majority of us feel - that we are being punished for trying to play what was supposed to be...

forums.frontier.co.uk

To H#]] with all these "tweaks". How about fixing all the stuff you broke with the F___ C(ommoners) triple dump?
Private Group is Broken.
Wing is broken.
Wing exploration is broken.
Apparently Core mining is broke if the PWS won't work.

 

[OGR_Nebula]

I like the idea of player-set bounties on the surface, but have no doubt this would become malicious very quickly.

Make the amount of bounty you can apply, proportional to the amount of notoriety the player has. If they're a clean player, never killed another player before, they're exempt from player-set bounties, however if you kill players, your bounty set by players can be higher depending on how many players are killed.

 

[F4fred]

Well, who knew?? ED is 100 years behind third world countries in terms of the design. It is 2020 and the game is mostly text wall with static images. This is design language from last century. Yes, FDev designers stuck in 2000... So keep thinking that ED is the best thing since sliced bread, I have different ideas...

Ah sorry. I thought you were referring to something truly revolutionary, like some innovative game play or AI. The failings of ED’s user interface are well known and have been discussed ad nauseum. Oddly enough barely notice it now while playing the game. But compared to Star Citizen which has a very slick interface it fares very badly. It is just such a shame that the rest of Star Citizen sucks and some of the graphical touches, while nice, become tedious after a while. Like the train ride to get to your ship followed by the run round the station. Great the first few times you do it, but you quickly find yourself wishing for a fade to black then back to cockpit of ship.

 

[F4fred]

Is the PWS actually broken??

I think the problem is they changed the way asteroids spawn content to fix the eggsploit not realising that it would break the PWS. The PWS still works, but you have to get very close to the rock before it starts to glow or do a 180 and look at the rocks you have already flown by and have spawned content and now glow.

 

[aRJay]

1. I haven't really explored because it takes ages to get to places that haven't already been explored yet. How many thousands of LYs do you have to go for that?
2. I haven't really played with friends. I'm not a peoples person, everyone is way ahead of me and has engineered their ships already and is not interested in doing anyhing; I strongly dislike wearing headphones and chatting via keyboard isn't really an option; most players don't seem to be friendly anyway, and it's not something I'm really interested in, either.
3. What is Hutton or Beagle?
4. I've heared about Colonia, and there is no way to get there because it's 20k LYs away. Even after lots of tedious engineering, that's at least 400 jumps. What are the chances that I would surive trying to get there, and why would I want to go there?
5. I've signed up to get prismatic shields and quit playing before getting any. What's the point of this power play? It's not like I could actually do anything, could I? I even joined a squadron and was told they are doing power play, and yet noone could explain to me what the point of it is.
6. I was forced to read and write a lot of forum posts, wiki pages and the like and had to search for information because there is a total lack of information in the game. I expect the information required to play a game to be found within the game and/or to be provided with good documentation. It's one of the very big issues with ED that it's effectively unplayable due to a lack of information. I didn't want to spend time on trying to find and read information, I just wanted to play.

1. Depending on the direction you go I believe you can start finding first discoveries between 500-1000Ly from the bubble, don’t head straight up or down and don’t head for anywhere famous or a pretty nebula to increase your chances.
2. Not everyone will be ahead of you.
3. Hutton Orbital an outpost it orbits Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our sun, and is reached by jumping in to Alpha Centauri the cruise from there let’s your ship reach 2001 times the speed of light and takes a long time But is the source of two rare goods and the home of the player group Hutton Orbital Truckers. Beagle Point the place on the far edge of the galaxy from where we are so around 65,000 light years away. Both places people visit to say they have been there.
4. I will visit Colonia at some point if only to unlock the engineers there to pin more blueprints. There was a line of outposts and bases established on the route by CGs a couple of years ago approximately 5,000Ly apart to allow for repairs but it is a long haul, I will probably ride out on someone else’s carrier and just track back which should finish of my exploration rank. If you jump using the boost from Neutron Stars it will cut down the number of jumps but will increase wear and tear, another thing I have yet to do.
5. Prismatics are the only thing that has tempted me about Powerplay so I haven’t bothered with it because just taking part for the equipment feels wrong somehow. I think it is politics which decreases my enthusiasm for it.

 

[Maymo]

What content are you referring to? Doing the same missions and/or trade routes or passenger missions over and over again? Why would anyone do that?

....when they can just shoot rocks over and over again and become an overnight billionaire? Exactly.

Having one activity that outstrips every other by a country mile doesn't exactly inspire one to experiment with different ways of making credits.

 

[Bob McBobblehead]

Most players only mine because it's the best money maker, once you make the same credits doing more fun activities mining will become a niche gameplay loop for the few cmdrs than like mining.

 

[skananote]

Most players only mine because it's the best money maker, once you make the same credits doing more fun activities mining will become a niche gameplay loop for the few cmdrs than like mining.

Agreed. Buffing other than mining activities to the reasonable income level would probably fix the "mining issue" just like that... I would love to make living on courier missions...

 

[Jmanis]

1. Depending on the direction you go I believe you can start finding first discoveries between 500-1000Ly from the bubble, don’t head straight up or down and don’t head for anywhere famous or a pretty nebula to increase your chances.

This one. Turn off KGBFOAM stars and you'll find plenty of first discoveries even within 500Ly.

When i went to Barnard's Loop recently i even got some first discoveries from that, and that's a freaking nebula

 

[Jmanis]

What content are you referring to? Doing the same missions and/or trade routes or passenger missions over and over again? Why would anyone do that?

Yup, that stuff. The same content people think they can't do until they've ground out a G5 Anaconda, for some bizarre reason... funnily enough by doing the same thing over and over again.