What is everyones ideal credits per hour rate?

[Stealthie]

If FD went down the road of making credits meaningless (which they practically did with mining) then what you're more looking at is some sort of sandbox game. Its not what i really am interested in with ED.

I think credits should have meaning, otherwise a lot of activities in ED are devalued. Rebuy is meaningless these days thanks to how easy credits are, caution can be thrown to the wind unless you worry about what you are carrying (bounties, exploration data, cargo), and that would more be from a BGS perspective where losses still matter (as loss of stuff means loss of time). Loss of some bounties isn't really that much of an issue when you are rolling in billions. Exploration data, yeah, explorers of course care about that still, but not usually for the credits.

New players could/can get into an Anaconda in a week with a little effort. That seems wrong to me.

I don't think it should go back to how it was near launch, where it took me a year to get enough credits for an Anaconda. While i see value in such slow progression myself, i know a majority would not like that.

So, i'd advocate for something like 10-20 million per hour without resorting to exploity mechanics like Robigo passenger runs and perhaps FD can look at doing something about edge cases like that.

HOWEVER! I feel that if earnings come down like that, Fleet Carrier prices would need looking at as well as tritium prices for refuelling.

Agree with this completely.

The only thing I'd add, as I've said a squillion times before, is that I'd like to see FDev develop "gold rushes" as a means of quick earning in addition to the "standard" Cr20m/hr (or whatever).


Fundamentally, there should be at least 3 ways of obtaining stuff (all stuff) in ED...

1) A "fallback" method, which is idiot-proof, can be accomplished by a newbie in a Sidey and only yields a small reward.
This method would be for newbies (duh!) and for players who find themselves "stuck" but need a way to obtain stuff.

2) A "standard" method, which is how you should expect to obtain stuff as a result of normal gameplay.
This would be how everybody routinely obtains their stuff.

3) An "advanced" method, which would require either a lot of risk, special ships or skills or a lot of time/effort.
This would be a way to obtain a lot of stuff in one go but it wouldn't be something you could do routinely.

That would apply to everything, from obtaining credits and mat's to gaining naval rank or powerplay merits.


In context of credits, we've already got crash-sites that yield cannisters of stuff.
That could be expanded so that there are more places (on planet surfaces and in space) where you could just find stuff lying around, swipe it and sell it to create a "fallback" method of earning credits.

As a "standard" method of earning credits, we've got, erm, heaps of stuff; missions, mining, trading and BHing.
No problems there.

For an "advanced" method of earning credits, I'd like to see chained missions (forming "camapigns") that would be challenging, take several hours to complete but offer rewards that are, say, double what you could earn by spending the same time doing regular activities.
I'd also like to see, as I said, some kind of "gold rush" which might involve, say, mining a specific thing and delivering it to a system where there's a temporary high demand, fighting in wars, exploring specific regions of the galaxy, carrying passengers away from wars or disease outbreaks etc.
The trick with a lot of these would be that they'd either require a specialised ship or the player would have to be smart enough to discover the opportunities.

 

[Morbad]

Fundamentally, there should be at least 3 ways of obtaining stuff (all stuff) in ED...

1) A "fallback" method, which is idiot-proof, can be accomplished by a newbie in a Sidey and only yields a small reward.
This method would be for newbies (duh!) and for players who find themselves "stuck" but need a way to obtain stuff.

2) A "standard" method, which is how you should expect to obtain stuff as a result of normal gameplay.
This would be how everybody routinely obtains their stuff.

3) An "advanced" method, which would require either a lot of risk, special ships or skills or a lot of time/effort.
This would be a way to obtain a lot of stuff in one go but it wouldn't be something you could do routinely.

That would apply to everything, from obtaining credits and mat's to gaining naval rank or powerplay merits.

This seems to preclude the possibility for setbacks.

Personally, I don't think anything should be idiot-proof. The bar doesn't need to be particularly high, but I have a significant antipathy to participation rewards in games, and I am entirely fine with the hopelessly incompetent being able to run themselves into the ground.

 

[Darkfyre99]

So what's everyones favourite credits per hour? Example options

Personally?

I thought the balance was right at around a maximum of 1000 credits/ton of cargo for safe tasks, with a working economic sim, and ship prices that made sense (aka the smaller ships.) The problem was that the price of larger ships and modules didn’t scale properly: capabilities grew roughly linearly, while prices grew exponentially. For example, a power plant that produced twice the power could cost 300 times as much, and eight times the cargo capacity cost 35 times as much. Sadly, those days never even survived the Alpha before credit creep set in.

Also personally, while I’m glad Frontier is balancing credit income, they’re balancing up in most cases. Income was already at “You can buy your own ship for that! What the frell do you need me for?” levels of absurdity. If they don’t rebalance ship and component costs upwards, it’s all meaningless in my eyes when it comes to a sense of progression, as well as the need to make interesting outfitting compromises.

I even have the perfect lore explanation: “Siting rising costs, the Pilots Federation has announced that it is ending ship subsidy program. Commanders should expect a sharp increase in the prices of small ships and components, with moderate price increases for medium ships.”

 

[Tikanderoga]

WHOA there! 10 tons of LTDs, even at the obscene value of 1.6 million, is only 16 million credits. That is a mere pittance compared to the 1 BILLION+ that is required for a fully A-rated Anaconda. Any new player handed 10 tons of LTDs is at BEST, going to be able to move up to maybe an A-rated Cobra, or a slightly paired down ASP X. I'm all for a bit of balancing but please don't throw out false statements like this.

By that I mean with 16m credits starting, one was able to get a nice little mining ship and then go nuts on LTDs, before the nerf. You can't spend 1b on a Conda, only cutter and Vette get that high, but regardless. Trust me, been there, done that.
I think you missed the leap in my thought, about the 16m being the starting capital for a mining ship, to make loads of credits afterwards.

 

[pnellesen]

Whatever the maximum value is that won't cause buffer overflow errors or integer out of range errors in my CPU...

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Agree with this completely.

The only thing I'd add, as I've said a squillion times before, is that I'd like to see FDev develop "gold rushes" as a means of quick earning in addition to the "standard" Cr20m/hr (or whatever).

Well, FD tend to add goldrushes all by themselves unitentionally

 

[Stealthie]

This seems to preclude the possibility for setbacks.

Personally, I don't think anything should be idiot-proof. The bar doesn't need to be particularly high, but I have a significant antipathy to participation rewards in games, and I am entirely fine with the hopelessly incompetent being able to run themselves into the ground.

I'm all for setbacks.
There are always be activities a player can do to turn things around IF they're prepared to make the effort, though.

Thing is, you can't not have a ship in ED.
Even if you load all your credits into a ship's cargo and then fly it into a sun and reject the rebuy, you still end up in a Sidey.
That being the case, there's always a way back, even if that means spending hours scooping salvage from debris fields or running data-delivery missions.

The whole point of having fallback, standard and advanced methods of obtaining stuff would mean the game could have more potential to inflict setbacks on a player, in the knowledge that there's always something they can do to recover... eventually.

 

[Voidwizard1]

I find it awful that anyone would even consider "credits per hour". Without getting into it more I will simply say it is a game not a job.
Could care less about the money aspect. I would be completely ok with them nerfing all payouts to 1/2 or 1/4 present amounts or less.

 

[Eraden]

By that I mean with 16m credits starting, one was able to get a nice little mining ship and then go nuts on LTDs, before the nerf. You can't spend 1b on a Conda, only cutter and Vette get that high, but regardless. Trust me, been there, done that.
I think you missed the leap in my thought, about the 16m being the starting capital for a mining ship, to make loads of credits afterwards.

First off, I have indeed spent over 1 billion on my Anaconda. Although, to be honest, that includes a complete set of A-rated upgrades to handle each of the various roles that I used it for (including 4 separate sets of weapons). A base ship with a single set of upgrades will probably run you somewhere from between 500 to 700 million. Still that is a lot of money compared to the paltry 16 million that a new miner would score IF he was lucky enough to find a market buying for 1.6 million per ton. Second for a miner to take that 16 million and turn it into enough cash to actually buy and A-rate an Anaconda, still requires a lot of time and a lot of lucky breaks. It also requires upgrading to at least one or two new ships during the process. At some point you have to ask yourself just how far from reality do you want to go in order to justify clamping down on new players. The reality is, right now, that miners are going to be lucky to score over a half million for LTDs and even less for Painite, Platinum, or Osmium. It's still going to take them quite a while to work their way up to bigger and better ships. Is it faster than what it was a few years ago? Yes, yes it is. It is nowhere near fast enough, though, to buy an A-rated Anaconda 2 hours from start. That is just hyperbole.

An addendum: Even before the nerf, for a new player to be able to buy an A-rated Anaconda in as little as two hours, required an obscene amount of aid from an established player. The established player would have had to have constantly fed the new player a steady stream of LTDs along with instructions on purchasing ships with bigger cargo holds in order to be fed even MORE LTDs. I suspect it would have been more realistic for a new player, armed with the knowledge of what to mine and where to go to get it along with where to go to sell it, to have gotten into an A-rated Anaconda in a matter of a few days to a week, not a few hours. That is still extremely fast. With the changes to mining, that is not possible anymore. It will most likely take a new player weeks at best, in order to finally get that A-rated Anaconda. As I said before, that is still quite fast but it still leaves the new player enough time to get used to the game. Just because a lot of us older players have spent months getting there doesn't mean we should force new players to do the same.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Personally?

I thought the balance was right at around a maximum of 1000 credits/ton of cargo for safe tasks, with a working economic sim, and ship prices that made sense (aka the smaller ships.) The problem was that the price of larger ships and modules didn’t scale properly: capabilities grew roughly linearly, while prices grew exponentially. For example, a power plant that produced twice the power could cost 300 times as much, and eight times the cargo capacity cost 35 times as much. Sadly, those days never even survived the Alpha before credit creep set in.

Also personally, while I’m glad Frontier is balancing credit income, they’re balancing up in most cases. Income was already at “You can buy your own ship for that! What the frell do you need me for?” levels of absurdity. If they don’t rebalance ship and component costs upwards, it’s all meaningless in my eyes when it comes to a sense of progression, as well as the need to make interesting outfitting compromises.

I even have the perfect lore explanation: “Siting rising costs, the Pilots Federation has announced that it is ending ship subsidy program. Commanders should expect a sharp increase in the prices of small ships and components, with moderate price increases for medium ships.”

No i think i was mistaken. I heard "reduction in mining" and got my hopes up. In truth its only reduction in a few commodities, raises in others, increases in combat, and stirring the pot with everything else and see how it lands. Still, it is a change overall from before the effort though, which is something new to play with at least. I don't think it will make you happy though, actually what happiness you have is probably halved or less (as objective obfuscation).

 

[Tikanderoga]

First off, I have indeed spent over 1 billion on my Anaconda. Although, to be honest, that includes a complete set of A-rated upgrades to handle each of the various roles that I used it for (including 4 separate sets of weapons). A base ship with a single set of upgrades will probably run you somewhere from between 500 to 700 million. Still that is a lot of money compared to the paltry 16 million that a new miner would score IF he was lucky enough to find a market buying for 1.6 million per ton. Second for a miner to take that 16 million and turn it into enough cash to actually buy and A-rate an Anaconda, still requires a lot of time and a lot of lucky breaks. It also requires upgrading to at least one or two new ships during the process. At some point you have to ask yourself just how far from reality do you want to go in order to justify clamping down on new players. The reality is, right now, that miners are going to be lucky to score over a half million for LTDs and even less for Painite, Platinum, or Osmium. It's still going to take them quite a while to work their way up to bigger and better ships. Is it faster than what it was a few years ago? Yes, yes it is. It is nowhere near fast enough, though, to buy an A-rated Anaconda 2 hours from start. That is just hyperbole.

You missed the part where I said: Pre-Nerf. I'm talking June/July, when everyone was farming the egg and was just making stupid amounts of money. A new player had no issues flying a conda within 2 hours given the right circumstances.
In its current light, it will take them heaps longer. I am well aware of that, and making progress a bit slower is not a bad thing.
We both know ED is a mile wide and only an inch deep, and that little bit of progress to be had might as well be spread out a little bit.

An addendum: Even before the nerf, for a new player to be able to buy an A-rated Anaconda in as little as two hours, required an obscene amount of aid from an established player. The established player would have had to have constantly fed the new player a steady stream of LTDs along with instructions on purchasing ships with bigger cargo holds in order to be fed even MORE LTDs. I suspect it would have been more realistic for a new player, armed with the knowledge of what to mine and where to go to get it along with where to go to sell it, to have gotten into an A-rated Anaconda in a matter of a few days to a week, not a few hours. That is still extremely fast. With the changes to mining, that is not possible anymore. It will most likely take a new player weeks at best, in order to finally get that A-rated Anaconda. As I said before, that is still quite fast but it still leaves the new player enough time to get used to the game. Just because a lot of us older players have spent months getting there doesn't mean we should force new players to do the same.

Well yes, agree, many of us took months to get where we are, where spending 1b on modules to chuck in the modules storage gets shrugged off because it didn't even dent the bank account.
While I say - between us older players - I think it's ok for a new player to work in their game and gain wealth at a slower pace, taking a few weeks until that 1b mark is reached. What is your stance on that?
What would you say is an OK progress in game in terms of wealth and ships?

 

[CMDR Xerix]

Base is 5m, anything beyond that obviously adds up. I don't have outfitting or a shipyard on mine or any fancy extra and it racks up 10m per week plus jumps.

How would my numbers kill carriers?
Let's say you are miner, and you can make a cozy 50m in an hour, no risk involved. Your carrier is now funded for 2.5 weeks, mine for 5 weeks. 1 hour, minimal risk of some NPC pirates.

Sure it would make FCs a long term goal for new comers, but FCs aren't something one is supposed to obtain within 48 hours of playing.

Yes, the veterans here who raked in the dough during the various gold rushes won't worry about credits ever again. But that's the way in every MMO. If you are there when the floodgates open, you can rake it in. Consider it a reward for being a long term player.

And the income streams need to be nerfed (mainly mining). In the last 2 years, credits have been handed out in abundance, to a point where they were meaningless. As you said: 1 hour of mining paid for 10 weeks of a FC upkeep.
Things do need to be balanced.
You could drop 10t of LTDs to a new player and they'd be flying an A rated conda 2 hours later.
Without the balancing of income streams, new players rush fly through the progress ED has to offer so far, the game will get left aside in no time, since they have already achieved and obtained everything. The rank grind for the Vette and the cutter are merely a slow down, but in terms of CR, everyone in the old rewards could afford multiples of them in no time.

So many veteran players have complained about upkeep (Which I do not agree with at 200m/h), and what you are suggesting is just pushing these opinions further into the negative. That is what I mean by killing Fleet Carriers, many of the owners will just think its not worth having to constantly grind to upkeep their carriers and the feature will not be used as much.

Its funny how you mention that new players fly through the progress of ED because of the credit inbalance. Obviously you haven't hit engineering yet, as credit earning is nothing compared to grinding materials. Even with 1000+ hours played, i've still got tons of engineering to do for new ship builds. You, and so many others, make it sound like Anaconda is the endgame. Its not 2015 anymore reaching Anaconda is barely mid-game now.

 

[goemon]

Obviously you haven't hit engineering yet, as credit earning is nothing compared to grinding materials. Even with 1000+ hours played, i've still got tons of engineering to do for new ship builds. You, and so many others, make it sound like Anaconda is the endgame. Its not 2015 anymore reaching Anaconda is barely mid-game now.

but as you can't buy material with CR, this is fully unrelated to earning rates.
fully engineering an AspE takes as long as fully engineering a cutter (okay, the cutter has one hardpoint and two utilities more...). it's also the same game"play"

that said, gathering the materials isn't for me what costs time, but flying to 3 mat traders to barter, and then to engineers for special effects.

still much better than years ago when moving a fleet was a weekend of game time... and of course not "necessary" (whether i use the G1 LR emissive pulse on my sidey, or get a focussed G5 emissive won't make that much of a difference ... and i still feel the urge to do it.)

 

[Harry Bawls]

200+ or im not interested.

 

[Eraden]

You missed the part where I said: Pre-Nerf. I'm talking June/July, when everyone was farming the egg and was just making stupid amounts of money. A new player had no issues flying a conda within 2 hours given the right circumstances.
In its current light, it will take them heaps longer. I am well aware of that, and making progress a bit slower is not a bad thing.
We both know ED is a mile wide and only an inch deep, and that little bit of progress to be had might as well be spread out a little bit.


Well yes, agree, many of us took months to get where we are, where spending 1b on modules to chuck in the modules storage gets shrugged off because it didn't even dent the bank account.
While I say - between us older players - I think it's ok for a new player to work in their game and gain wealth at a slower pace, taking a few weeks until that 1b mark is reached. What is your stance on that?
What would you say is an OK progress in game in terms of wealth and ships?

Hmmm, it seems we are not far off if at all in our positions. Personally, without getting any direct aid from an established player (which in my mind really is truly gaming the system), a new player should and WOULD in our current environment, go through at least a couple of new ships before seeing that shiny new Anaconda. Without direct aid, this will definitely take at least a few weeks to a few months to achieve. This gives a new player time to experience different ships and get a bit of a better feel for the game. I really see nothing wrong with that. The only true outliers occur when new players are literally FED stuff in order to progress at break-neck speed.

 

[Tikanderoga]

So many veteran players have complained about upkeep (Which I do not agree with at 200m/h), and what you are suggesting is just pushing these opinions further into the negative. That is what I mean by killing Fleet Carriers, many of the owners will just think its not worth having to constantly grind to upkeep their carriers and the feature will not be used as much.

Its funny how you mention that new players fly through the progress of ED because of the credit inbalance. Obviously you haven't hit engineering yet, as credit earning is nothing compared to grinding materials. Even with 1000+ hours played, i've still got tons of engineering to do for new ship builds. You, and so many others, make it sound like Anaconda is the endgame. Its not 2015 anymore reaching Anaconda is barely mid-game now.

I didn't agree with a 200m/w upkeep either. I think the upkeep the way it is now is just fine.
Besides: If one can't afford a FC, maybe that person shouldn't own one?

I've done enough engineering for my share. 3500h in, all engineer access at max level should be enough IMHO, except for Bris Decker who only has 4 ranks. I've even done the Colonia ones for "hits and giggles". FYI: 5.7b in assets, 108b in cash and an FC with 8 years of upkeep. I let you decide where i am in terms of game progress.

But let's be honest: Grinding G5 mats isn't exactly gameplay, considering the rarity of G5 mats, forces a player to do HGE looping - that's just bad. Or the guardian grind is just as bad: Kill the sentinels, raise pylons, scan orb, log off, repeat.
Grinding is not content. Same as making players wait in SC for 5+ minutes, let alone for 90 minutes if one wants to fly to Hutton, for whatever reason that may be. Fabled free Conda or a mug? Grinding is just repeating the same gameloop to obtain stuff.


Core mining for example is great gameplay. I really enjoy that. With the broken PWA, it's not exactly fun though.
AX combat is great gameplay. Great fights, one has to think on their feet.
Regular combat usually resorts to jousting. No great, but not bad either.
Laser mining is mind numbing and great to catch up movies and TV shows.
Exploration is a thing for some, not for others. I enjoy the space golf, but the radio button simulator needs to be tossed about 100k LY beyond Beagle point. My opinion.

The only reason I picked the Anaconda is because the cutter and the Vette are locked behind a grind wall of ranks. If it wouldn't be for the ranks, they might as well be right up there. Then again some people have reported to go from Rank 1 to 12 within a day or two of grinding rep with the Imps or Feds. Burning stations are also great for that. Even faster rep gain. I used that to max out my Fed and imp rank.

Endgame is hard to pick.
Personally, I see AX combat as end game. You engineered your ship to the max and you can engage in activities that are locked away behind grind walls. Really just grind walls, as you pointed out, grinding engineering mats.
For anything else, you don't need an engineered ship. You can do any other activity in a sidewinder. I'm not making this up, people got to triple elite in sideys.

 

[Darkfyre99]

No i think i was mistaken. I heard "reduction in mining" and got my hopes up. In truth its only reduction in a few commodities, raises in others, increases in combat, and stirring the pot with everything else and see how it lands. Still, it is a change overall from before the effort though, which is something new to play with at least. I don't think it will make you happy though, actually what happiness you have is probably halved or less (as objective obfuscation).

That's without a doubt true. I play games to make interesting decisions, to develop strategies and skills to advance through the game, to weigh pros and cons from a buffet of sub-optimal options... and failure should always be on the table. It should be possible to have too much ship for your skill level, to make mistakes that have consequences, to have a downward failure spiral that results in a smaller, less capable ship.

What I wanted most from this game was to be a struggling Commander, always one failure away from disaster. Yes, I expected to progress through the ships, but given my limited time to play games in general, and high focus games like this one in particular, I expected to be in small ships for years. Instead, my Commander is a wealthy dilettante, with way too much money on her hands. Even my alt, used only for Buckyball Racing, has a net worth of 100 million credits. That's how easy it is to earn credits while faffing about these days.

And it's all because of Frontier's Monty Haul Campaign approach to this MMO.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

That's without a doubt true. I play games to make interesting decisions, to develop strategies and skills to advance through the game, to weigh pros and cons from a buffet of sub-optimal options... and failure should always be on the table. It should be possible to have too much ship for your skill level, to make mistakes that have consequences, to have a downward failure spiral that results in a smaller, less capable ship.

What I wanted most from this game was to be a struggling Commander, always one failure away from disaster. Yes, I expected to progress through the ships, but given my limited time to play games in general, and high focus games like this one in particular, I expected to be in small ships for years. Instead, my Commander is a wealthy dilettante, with way too much money on her hands. Even my alt, used only for Buckyball Racing, has a net worth of 100 million credits. That's how easy it is to earn credits while faffing about these days.

And it's all because of Frontier's Monty Haul Campaign approach to this MMO.

They would have to change their view of credits as being first a social media response tool to have a basis to start.

At least it feels that way. And the only thing we have evidence for in the last 4 years.

 

[Darkfyre99]

They would have to change their view of credits as being first a social media response tool to have a basis to start.

At least it feels that way. And the only thing we have evidence for in the last 4 years.

True. Sometimes it feels like Frontier is Monty Hauling harder than a 12 year old gamemaster trying to bribe their friends into playing the game. "If I give them tons of XP, gold, and magic items, they'll like the game, right???"

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

"If I give them tons of XP, gold, and magic items, they'll like the game, right???"

".. and we can tell David the last feature was a success, everyone loves it."

... Okay, so that's only 1/2 the picture. Everyone can have a carrier in, say 2 weeks. Might as well go get yours. A few days more will get you a few years upkeep. Why not i guess.