Will the Balance Patches continue on 2021?

thargoidspy · Jan 1, 2021

In the last months we saw three patches in term of cr balancing in mining and combat. Arguably good or bad, they had at least given some new directional changes.

So will we continue to receive balancing patches this year? I would hate if they are indeed the last provided patches before Odyssey.

There are many issues that FDev needed to address. A few I can think of are:

Buff Exploring credits. Exploring for a few weeks and your paycheck is less than a couple hours of mining/ combat just felt wrong.
(yes you can do Road to Riches but still far inferior), if buff Explore cr, they may need to change the rank exp accordingly.
Increase rewards for lesser played activities such as cqc, smuggling, pirating, mega ship looting, planetary assaults, research limpet collected mats etc ...
Ships balancing (pretty unlikely since they have to incoporate the code with Odyssey)

These would revive many gameplay mechanics and make ED much much more interesting.

Just a few personal thoughts, and Happy New Year cmdrs!

Speedcuffs · Jan 1, 2021

Salvage.

Topheron · Jan 1, 2021

Look at the Beta forums... more changes for certain high end materials (BETA - NOT RELEASED YET), so, yes, balancing looks like a part of every patch.

The relevant part:

Added supply and demand volumes for certain, high-end minerals. Now, trading goods such as Void Opals is more realistic; markets can still offer a high buy price, but they will offer less as demand is met. As part of this change, these high-end minerals will now be demanded more by specific economy types. This change will affect the following commodities:

Alexandrite

Benitoite

Grandidierite

Low Temperature Diamond

Monazite

Musgravite

Painite

Rhodplumsite

Serendibite

Void Opal

CMDR Serra · Jan 1, 2021

I'd like to see explo data reduced in value actually - if anything. But give a large bonus for first discovery/mapped and codex discoveries.

GraphiteGB · Jan 1, 2021

They said on Live streams what they were not planning to alter at all...
After asked they stated one item was being looked at remained and that would be Engineering Items... Galnet has a Post on that as well...
As they posted on galnet about how engineers are working together to make engineering take fewer items...
Nothing else was being targeted and every thing announced, but that, has been done...
The balances are not permanent and are done server side currently, when the balance is final all clients would need a patch to force the final changes, due to there being NO patch the balance changes already out, still need to be finalised...
so yes All the balance changes can change again in 2021…

There no requirement for a patch till changes are final...

Bottom Hat · Jan 1, 2021

Dunno. Probably. As soon as some spanner publishes a new meta they didn't see coming.

Vedmo · Jan 1, 2021

Bruce G said:
Welcome to the third and final set of game balancing changes this side of 2021. In the new year, we'll turn our attention to other aspects of the game that you've raised in your suggestions and feedback.

I'm holding hope over that post.

Max Bothin · Jan 1, 2021

make stealing missions more profitable. getting about 50 from anything from Elite-NPC should give you 200 million credits at the end. Not 1.

HaggisMuncher69 · Jan 1, 2021

Been in Musca doing some passenger saving missions during incursion.. Unfortunately, I've stopped playing as kept getting frozen in the Worm hole/vortex... Aka Orange Sidewinger error. Yes, I'm fully aware of the Bug reporting sites but I STRONGLY feel that FDEV are ignoring these issues/problems. I currently play on ps4 pro console but will be switching to PC in a few months. Do these Errors occur as much on PC? If so do you think they swill be addressed or made worse with the current amendments in balancing as these current issues started on or before the Fleet carrier launch. New stuff in game, GREAT but more bugs coming to add to existing ones. NOT so Great. Will it be a revamp or a disaster when Odyssey is launched as that's all FDEV are working on and our famous Youtubers highlighting. Have u seen this gun and oh look at the logo on the armour... LOL... Can we deal with the now please FDEV

Darth Ender · Jan 1, 2021

as long as fdev doesn't address why people feel the need for things to be buffed or nerfed when it comes to income, you can expect such "patches" to perpetually be upcoming.

They need to create gameplay loops that create a differentiation of income based on skill and ability so the same gameplay loop isn't used by noobies and 6 year veterans. By not making that change, you just guarantee that you're going to stay in a tug of war you can't win.

Urbanski101 · Jan 1, 2021

Well I really hope they haven't finished with the balance pass...haulage missions got hammered and a few are broken. That needs to be looked at and re-aligned.

I'd like to see haulage missions back to where they were before the balance pass...those missions weren't even part of the balance but ended up getting smashed because certain mineral price increases rewarded stupid levels of credits for simple haulage missions.

The fact FDev didn't see that coming and then didn't see what would happen when they messed with the mission reward calculation to try and fix it...broke it even further...endless whack a mole nerfs, the result being that haulage missions are now largely not worth taking.

I get the distinct impression from the last couple of months that the devs responsible for the balance pass don't really understand their own game and didn't think any of this through properly.

Darth Ender · Jan 1, 2021

Urbanski101 said:
I get the distinct impression from the last couple of months that the devs responsible for the balance pass don't really understand their own game and didn't think any of this through properly.

that happens when you run game development like generic software projects. Little "stories" worked on by random developers week to week because it's cheaper to hire for that kind of work than to hold on to developers who know how everything works (at least in a given subsystem) and work in that same part of the code that they're experts on week after week. I get the impression that the game started out working like the latter, and then shifted to the former for cost effectiveness once the heavy lifting was done.

Riverside · Jan 1, 2021

Urbanski101 said:
I get the distinct impression from the last couple of months that the devs responsible for the balance pass don't really understand their own game and didn't think any of this through properly.

This is how a new dev team learns though

I'm not keen on having such large sweeping changes this far down the line, this should be a time of tweaking & honing, not massive changes imo, but it is what it is.

HaggisMuncher69 · Jan 1, 2021

Frontier Developers do not care about old issues/bugs..They think tweaking more things like balancing will fix the errors but they are making the game worse and expanding servers by giving away horizon to boost player base for Odyssey launch. The golden oldies of ED, know what's coming and it will not be Roses. Although Odyssey tickles the excitement anyway. Money, Money, money and the bugs n errors fix them selves... Think that's there mentality in a nut shell. btw, screw the noobs that want anacondas and fleet carriers. Earn it

thargoidspy · Jan 1, 2021

But give a large bonus for first discovery/mapped and codex discoveries.

I like that idea alot, leave the normal rate but increase payout for first discovery/ maped/ codex. That would make more people go out into the black.

haulage missions got hammered and a few are broken. That needs to be looked at and re-aligned

Yeah I hope they commited for further patch. Honestly I prefer Fdev experiment things (anything at all) than just a stale progress we have for the last 2 years before November 2020.

askavir · Jan 1, 2021

Stuff that desperatly needs balance passes:

Salvage (all kinds of salvage, legal, illegall, items from guardian and thargoind sites, etc).
Search & Rescue
Smuggling

Lightspeed · Jan 2, 2021

thargoidspy said:
In the last months we saw three patches in term of cr balancing in mining and combat. Arguably good or bad, they had at least given some new directional changes.

So will we continue to receive balancing patches this year? I would hate if they are indeed the last provided patches before Odyssey.

There are many issues that FDev needed to address. A few I can think of are:

Buff Exploring credits. Exploring for a few weeks and your paycheck is less than a couple hours of mining/ combat just felt wrong.
(yes you can do Road to Riches but still far inferior), if buff Explore cr, they may need to change the rank exp accordingly.

Increase rewards for lesser played activities such as cqc, smuggling, pirating, mega ship looting, planetary assaults, research limpet collected mats etc ...

Ships balancing (pretty unlikely since they have to incoporate the code with Odyssey)

These would revive many gameplay mechanics and make ED much much more interesting.

Just a few personal thoughts, and Happy New Year cmdrs!

Darth Ender · Jan 2, 2021

if they do something for salvage, it should involve bringing back the Dredger but this time as a player flown ship. i want to eat wreckage and potentially unaware ships.