Hello,
whenever you talk to someone in the community and/or watch videos about Elite Dangerous, there is one MASSIVE flaw that is always repeated: The profitability of different jobs has always been totally unbalanced, an issue that has not been addressed since the game was launched and became even worse. The promise of Frontier has been that there wouldn't be a single way to make massive amounts of money but in the current state of the game mining (and passenger missions perhaps) are the only really viable source of making money (see attached screenshot as well as this video where the screen was taken from, too:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5FvVff14FA&ab_channel=HawkesGaming
)
So, if you want to make serious credits to afford all those nice big ships or even a carrier, mining is the only way to really do it. Look at the screenshot attached. It makes no sense that combat pays so low. You risk your ship and thus it should pay WAY more. You need to make the other disciplines way more attractive so people actually have a choice what they wanna do. Just chilling out looking for nice asteroid deposits? Great. Fighting your way through hordes of pirates? Or even Thargoids? Great! Make it worth our time to actually follow another discipline. I really want to pick up on the game again but I know if I would have to 'grind' for credits through mining just so I could afford a carrier and be able to maintain it. And to make this amount of cash without being a full-time player becomes even more of a burden than enjoyment especially because it would literally force me to do mining to keep up carrier maintenance for example. If combat paid much more one could log in, do a little bit of combat, earn money, and log out again.
In any case, however, you balance it in the end:
1. If you truly want people to earn the way they want, then high tier jobs/activities should all have a similar potential of profitability.
2. However, it is ok to have variation. Depends on how you exactly execute your activity (what enemies you fight, what you are mining etc.)
3. Consider the risk of the activity as well. Combat REALLY needs to be buffed up!
4. Take the time it takes to complete a job vs the actual profit into account
5. Make it feel rewarding for a player to follow any kind of career. A bounty hunter should feel that it becomes increasingly profitable to hunt for higher-value targets/fight higher value enemies etc. For mining, this already exists: Painite and LTD are the resources to go for where you can scale your profits
6. Don't reduce LTD and Painite income. Buff up alternatives to mining.
Thank you!
whenever you talk to someone in the community and/or watch videos about Elite Dangerous, there is one MASSIVE flaw that is always repeated: The profitability of different jobs has always been totally unbalanced, an issue that has not been addressed since the game was launched and became even worse. The promise of Frontier has been that there wouldn't be a single way to make massive amounts of money but in the current state of the game mining (and passenger missions perhaps) are the only really viable source of making money (see attached screenshot as well as this video where the screen was taken from, too:
)
So, if you want to make serious credits to afford all those nice big ships or even a carrier, mining is the only way to really do it. Look at the screenshot attached. It makes no sense that combat pays so low. You risk your ship and thus it should pay WAY more. You need to make the other disciplines way more attractive so people actually have a choice what they wanna do. Just chilling out looking for nice asteroid deposits? Great. Fighting your way through hordes of pirates? Or even Thargoids? Great! Make it worth our time to actually follow another discipline. I really want to pick up on the game again but I know if I would have to 'grind' for credits through mining just so I could afford a carrier and be able to maintain it. And to make this amount of cash without being a full-time player becomes even more of a burden than enjoyment especially because it would literally force me to do mining to keep up carrier maintenance for example. If combat paid much more one could log in, do a little bit of combat, earn money, and log out again.
In any case, however, you balance it in the end:
1. If you truly want people to earn the way they want, then high tier jobs/activities should all have a similar potential of profitability.
2. However, it is ok to have variation. Depends on how you exactly execute your activity (what enemies you fight, what you are mining etc.)
3. Consider the risk of the activity as well. Combat REALLY needs to be buffed up!
4. Take the time it takes to complete a job vs the actual profit into account
5. Make it feel rewarding for a player to follow any kind of career. A bounty hunter should feel that it becomes increasingly profitable to hunt for higher-value targets/fight higher value enemies etc. For mining, this already exists: Painite and LTD are the resources to go for where you can scale your profits
6. Don't reduce LTD and Painite income. Buff up alternatives to mining.
Thank you!
