Don't let this guy trash the thread. I've just added him to ignore. Listening to people gripe about their pixel money for 3 pages is just above smashing my own toes with a hammer on my list of things I'd rather not do.
FDev: Credit rebalancing incoming, "more reward for higher risk" activities
- Thread starter StuartGT
- Start date
Amen.
The one thing they have fixed to a degree is the hyperfixation on one mineral to the exclusion of all others. ED's economy suffers in general from that (as did Elite's, and Frontier's - some commodities just aren't worth trading ever) - honestly, right from the start global prices should have been fluctuating so it would never be "painite is the thing to mine, mine nothing else, painite painite painite, this is the best place to sell painite".
Ideally it should react to player activity, globally, so that mining one mineral to the exclusion of all others for weeks in a row would cause that mineral to lose value, while the excluded ones would slowly creep up in value due to scarcity. One day someone realises that nobody's been mining Moissanite for ages because it's not found in any of the meta mining systems and makes an absolute killing, eddb starts reporting high prices for it and a new rush starts, the miners reddit fills with threads about the hot place to mine Moissanite, and so on.
That is what really needs to happen. Not just "go bookmark this one system and mine this spot forever".
I would also offer there needs to be a legit crafting system in this game, allow players to manufacture ships and modules and sell them, either to players or the NPC market, this would give value to the "cheap" ores as they would be required feed stock for different game objects. It would also tie them to a gold standard, which works both ways. You would know X amount of various ores equals an Asp Explorer and that is worth X amount of Credits on average.
The biggest problem, which I believe both you and I are addressing is, we can mine raw material and we can gain credits, but at the end of the day what do these things allow you and by extension the ED universe to do, which isn't represented in game, and that is the tangible goods that exist in the game. You never really see the NPC stations produce more goods based on the raw material you sell to them.
Take Painite for example, (I know it has a bunch of uses, but I think one of them is Jewelry, so let's just go with that.)
When the player base sells Painite to a station, since you can't buy painite from the station, it's assumed the local market and economy consumes it, and as such, something should be produced from all that painite. As it stands now, it literally is sell painite, and you get money, and yet the market economy doesn't change, implying the painite is just sitting somewhere. What should happen is a corresponding increase in the goods produced from painite, that you can then take your earnings, buy said commodities and go take them to places where those painite based commodities are in high demand but low supply. Thus allowing you to earn even more. Your money has in turn made more money, that's how trade is supposed to work.
As it stands right now we have raw material and we have credits, but no real representation of the intermediary between the two. And yes, I know there is "Commodities" market but my point is, the station produces them at a static rate based on the current BGS state, not the actual supplies from what they are actually being given by traders. And so it's not so much a case of bring X, Y and Z commodity to the market to cause XX effect, it's just a case of bringing anything at sufficient enough credit value to trigger YY BGS state.
I think miners would be more apt to migrate from resource to resource if resources actually had a greater effect on the world. If I knew the Wolves of Jonai were about to get into a war, and I know their war materials would include ships and projectile weapons, and I know what materials those items chiefly require to produce. I could go mining for those normally lower end materials because I know the WOJ need them, or I could take it even one step further and produce those ships and modules myself and sell them direct.
It would give industrial level miners something to do with those low end ores that we know will never have a gold rush, and give us a reason to mine them. And as a result miners would migrate and thus give room for your idea of the market prices to fluctuate naturally as you suggest.
I heard the alpha of the game had that and people complained because their perfect A-B trading routes weren't eternally persistent.
"What do you mean someone has to ship fertiliser to this agricultural economy before it can produce tobacco? I want to trade the lucrative commodity now"
yea, they are deffo on a wind up
Honestly, Fdev needs to lay the ground work for that stuff now, especially if Player owned outposts will be a thing in the future. yes I know Fdev said "We have no plans" but they said the same thing about walking around, and Oddysey is coming out in a few months, so I consider the "we have no plans" to translate to "We have no f*&%ing clue how to do it, so we'll just work on other stuff for now." And the reason why I say that is with Oddysey, they will have the assets and even gameplay engine in which to allows players to do that, they just need to build interactivity and game mechanics into it to take it that one step further, so it's not completely out of left field.
Sigh. I've no clue about this game anymore. Elite was the most fun whilst progressing through the small ships. Is the intention now to ensure everyone gets an Anaconda in the first few hours of play? (Shakes head in despair...)
Things were sooooooooooooo much better just after the initial release. (Looks back in nostalgia.)
Things were sooooooooooooo much better just after the initial release. (Looks back in nostalgia.)
Well, I am fairly new player, 500h+, I have 1.7B in my bank and I fly Cobra. It is perfect for what I do. I have also Python that I have no idea what to do with yet and exploration fitted Phantom... I would never go for large ship as I love to have an access to Outposts... There are other reasons like much more pleasant landing on planets etc... So small ships rock...Sigh. I've no clue about this game anymore. Elite was the most fun whilst progressing through the small ships. Is the intention now to ensure everyone gets an Anaconda in the first few hours of play? (Shakes head in despair...)
Things were sooooooooooooo much better just after the initial release. (Looks back in nostalgia.)
Not me, guv.... Terrible ship, wouldn't have one as a gift
READ WHAT I WROTE. I was VERY, VERY, VERY clear that THIS time FDEV gave warning. This is not the first time they have nerfed prices and in each of those cases, they gave NO indication of the massive price nerfs they implemented, nor the incredible number of new ways they have found to break the game along the way.
Yes, I do have a carrier, and I have resources enough to keep that carrier (and all services) running for more than 10 years without earning another credit. What's your point? My preferred gameplay is to explore, to mine, to grow my credit balance. I have no particular interest in combat or the upcoming FPS features. Maybe, at some point, I'll change my mind, but for now, this is how I prefer to play in the limited time I have available.
You said, "you didn't earn that Fleet Carrier exclusively doing combat, trade or exploration" -- you neglected to mention MINING, which is a perfectly viable career path in the game. But you're making assumptions - I have engaged in all those activities. For the first 2-3 years, everything I did in-game was combat and trade, with a small amount of exploration. I only got into mining maybe 2-3 years ago when VO became a thing. Now, yes, the bulk of my assets are the result of mining, but I've not exploited the various bugs to make the bulk of that money - I spent hours upon hours mining away, dodging pirates, carrying my cargo to a port to sell it. I don't see how you can argue that isn't a valid way to play the game when it is a career-path explicitly supported by the game.
Also, had you read other posts I've made, you would see that I am very much an advocate for people being able to play exactly as they want. I don't care if someone can get, in two weeks, a ship it took me 10 months to earn. It makes no difference to me whatsoever. If they can do it in that time, then go for it. I really don't care. I will continue to play the game the way I want to play the game.
Deleted member 182079
D
Just tested this, sample size 1, Master rank FGS - indicated bounty 72k, actual bounty 301k.
I like this.
Some more data, per Codex session details vanilla bounties were 400k, while 'real' bounties paid out are 1.7m, in about 15 minutes. I think this is pretty fair when comparing it to the other activities in game (mining, trade, exploration). You could argue it's on the low side but I'd probably counter that with that the other activities are still too well paid.
What this game really needs is an increase of all cost (ships, modules, ammo, fuel) and reduction in the FC base price, but I doubt that's going to happen, so I'll take it for sure.
I like this.
Some more data, per Codex session details vanilla bounties were 400k, while 'real' bounties paid out are 1.7m, in about 15 minutes. I think this is pretty fair when comparing it to the other activities in game (mining, trade, exploration). You could argue it's on the low side but I'd probably counter that with that the other activities are still too well paid.
What this game really needs is an increase of all cost (ships, modules, ammo, fuel) and reduction in the FC base price, but I doubt that's going to happen, so I'll take it for sure.
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There was, back pre-release, a video of 'mini-Elite' where NPCs would trade for commodities based on planetary demand, that was in one of the newsletters.
Honestly, I think all player dynamisms got crushed as just being too difficult to balance. You have systems with 100's of population, and systems with 1,000,000,000's. 'Realistically' All the players in Elite couldn't hope to influence the latter, but a handful of pilots could completely manipulate the former. So there's a fundamental disconnect in scales. You'd also have the issue of starting a trading CG say, causing a run on goods in an area, leading to some pilots missing out - cue epic whingeing on forums. Hence, it's all just trading in abstract, with fixed economies, that reset on a tic, so everyone get a 'fair share'.
I do really, really wish that the game was still primarily about commodities trading, with other activities as 'sidelines' or 'one off specials' - like the previous three games.
Good on you. It took me close to 4 years to accumulate my first billion. You are playing a perfectly valid game, no matter what anyone else tells you.
It was the most fun FOR YOU. Some people didn't find that fun at all and considered that the necessary grind to get to the point where they can buy, equip and enjoy the larger ships. There are lots of ways to play this game that are just as valid as the way YOU choose to play YOUR game.Sigh. I've no clue about this game anymore. Elite was the most fun whilst progressing through the small ships. Is the intention now to ensure everyone gets an Anaconda in the first few hours of play? (Shakes head in despair...)
Things were sooooooooooooo much better just after the initial release. (Looks back in nostalgia.)
Yes, carrier pricing can be changed remotely. That's not my point.Two data points, with more to come:
ANNOUNCEMENT - Game Balancing
Greetings Commanders! Game balance has been at the heart of many discussions around Elite Dangerous, for a long time, and rightly so. At its core, Elite Dangerous is about blazing your own trail and we want all Commanders to feel fairly rewarded for whichever path they choose. To this end, we...forums.frontier.co.uk
ANNOUNCEMENT - Game Balancing Pt.2
Greetings Commanders, Last week we posted this announcement about our plans for game balancing. Make sure to give it a read for information on the changes that were implemented last week and an overview of our plans. A lot has happened in the short amount of time since then. We've collected...
I disagree with your moaning. Carrier pricing can be changed remotely, so distance isn't an issue.
Carriers were offering a service out in the black, allowing people to mine and sell a known commodity like LTD (which had a roughly stable market price of ~1.6M/T). The carriers were offering prices of say, 1.3M/T so pilots could mine, cash out and continue mining, with the intent of taking that cargo back to the bubble to sell it at the full price of 1.6M/T, making a profit of ~300K/T. When those carriers are out in the black far enough that it will take several days to get back, not everyone is able to get back in time to sell the cargo. All those carriers who had been out for weeks, accumulating tens of thousands of tons of LTD, instantly took a loss of 500K/T when FDEV nerfed LTD prices and they topped out around 800K/T - they were LITERALLY out of pocket for having offered a service to miners out in the black.
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In a shared universe the way 'YOU choose to play YOUR game' impacts others though. Do you really think Frontier's intention when they crafted Elite was to have system maps full of fleet carriers? - a massive boondoggle they had to add-in at a huge price, simply because they've been so bad at managing the economy of their game?
In trying to please everyone, and let everyone have their way, I fear we've long since lost what made Elite, Elite. But you are right, to me, the grind through the small ships was the game. I slowly lost interest when it became clear that, through rare goods trading, then Robigo smuggling, then mining etc. you could bypass pretty much the entire game in a few weeks work.
I may play my way, but a lot of others don't seem to, and in a (possibly adversarial) multiplayer game, that's an annoying disadvantage. One made worse by the terrible ship balancing, and additional disparities added by engineering.
Edit TBH: Wealth disparity wouldn't matter so much if there were a greater variety of ships, and less power difference between them (e.g. if shields were more level across all ships, and things like engineering and SCBs weren't a thing). Anyway, I can but dream... Stable door, horse and all that.
Agreed, but entirely unrelated to the point I've been making. I specifically stated that I'm fine with things changing, but since player currency is the time investment, you owe it to your player base to give fair warning when a significant change is coming that affects their willingness to make that time investment.