I'm still working out in my head what this means, exactly, but I'm pretty certain that's f'ing fantastic.
C'mon, this is faintly ridiculous.
- Thread starter Noddie
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I'm still working out in my head what this means, exactly, but I'm pretty certain that's f'ing fantastic.
Depends on how you play, I suppose
It is a fun little ship, which I first flew a long time before i discovered engineers and still enjoyed!
Same with the Vulture... Engineered it really is a bit naughty
At least you won't need a rebuy if you get ganked, so that's something
The “you can get a Conda in 24 hr” crowed drastically underestimate the learning curve for figuring out how to fly, how the economies work, finding 3rd party tools.
I find it extremely unlikely that someone who has never played elite would immediately jump into the game and be willing and capable to grind the current meta for a big ship.
making “too much” money is only an issue for experienced CMDRs
Every MMO type game has some version of grind. But that is what I don't understand, why make every aspect of the game a grind? How does grind = fun?
I started playing the game when VO mining was the money maker. I knew nothing about it. I did courier missions Ngalinn > Mainani to get rank. When I topped off I'd gone from sidewinder to dbx, dbx+aspx. I boosted to Ceos and did boom delivery missions. In came my python. At the tail end of it, I couldn't afford either the Cutter or the Corvette, but I had the rank for both. I really wanted that Cutter. So I did some research, made the Python a miner, truly enjoyed blowing up asteroids, bought the Cutter. At which point, I got into panite mining.
Along the way I got into engineering (needed to engineer the Cutter shields, because the best way of stopping the Cutter on a dime is to run into something), and then unlocking the Guardian stuff, and then ...
The exact same people saying to the newer guys that they will stop playing the game because everything is to easy were saying it too me when I got into these threads.
It still doesn't fundamentally make any sense to me. ED has a hugely steep learning curve. That can be an incredibly painful experience. I'll never forget the time I tried docking in a station, but I forgot to ask permission. I'm suddenly getting all these alerts and messages. A count down and then poof I'm at the rebuy screen, wondering what the hell I had done wrong.
No consequences for mistakes my commander's rear tail feathers.
Unless you shoot a security ship by mistake, but why worry about the details?
Oh, high res ... so an un-engineered sidewinder can take out a deadly Anaconda?
And no way is it 200 million. I don't make that in my Corvette. Unless you have a kill warrant scanner? How many newbies know about those, though?
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I've done that a few times. Chaff, Boost, Boost, Boost, Boost and - crucially - HIGH WAKE!
Keep a high-wake destination locked in when you're in a CZ (or anywhere you might want to leave quickly!). If it all goes south, you need a dedicated high-wake key and a pre-programmed target system to get you the heck outa there PDQ. Don't try to finish your kill, don't dock a fighter, don't do anything but boost, corkscrew and chaff, heatsinks if you got 'em whilst it charges. If shields are down, consider going into S/R because it makes you likely to take fewer hits. Just aim to be gone the moment you realise it messed up. This is why I don't build ships that disable the FSD when you deploy the hard points. You need that FSD online FAST when you decide a tactical retreat is in order
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I wish I knew. I can't figure out if they are just bored burned-out vets or if there's some ulterior motive they just wont come out and say. Nobody has been able to articulate exactly WHAT the benefit of a long drawn out credit grind would be. I'm still waiting for that answer. A real one.
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After a few account resets, I only have one account over a billion credits, and I do not have an FC. I reset two accounts with Corvettes. I do however, have nearly every engineer unlocked in the bubble on all three current accounts. It is not about credits.
Think of ships as character classes in an RPG. You want to try out a class, but you may not want to play it exclusively. You might not be very good at it, and you certainly won't be rocking the meta version of it. You just want a little variety in your GAME experience, and the low credit threshold allows you to get it.
Let's be a little honest here as well. FDEV sells PAINT. The more different types of ships you have the more PAINT FDEV sells. A low threshold to unlocking more ships just makes good real world business sense.
Think of ships as character classes in an RPG. You want to try out a class, but you may not want to play it exclusively. You might not be very good at it, and you certainly won't be rocking the meta version of it. You just want a little variety in your GAME experience, and the low credit threshold allows you to get it.
Let's be a little honest here as well. FDEV sells PAINT. The more different types of ships you have the more PAINT FDEV sells. A low threshold to unlocking more ships just makes good real world business sense.
Personally, I think at times this very community contributes to this problem of new players feeling the need to rush to achieve some new shiny but telling them the quickest and often most advanced way of getting it.
For example, recently a new player asked a question about engineering and it was clearly evident that he had no idea about collecting mats, especially RAW mats on the surface of a body. But instead of being told how to fit an SRV, what types of bodies, how to identify which ones are landable or even what 3rd party tools are available to find the nearest body with the mats he needs he was bombarded with advice to travel 12,000 lys to the shards. Sure that is one way to get RAW mats but the poor guy probably hadn't travelled more than a 100lys or so. But no, the experts were adamant that heading to the shards is the only real way to get the mats. So naturally when a new player asks about a way to earn credits, instead of being told how to trade, how to mine, how to explore, they are flooded with details of the latest meta on how they can earn 500m credits per hour or something. And they naturally believe it, not realising they need ships they don't have yet, rank they don't have yet, reputation they don't have yet. Then they get jaded because they 'fail' to achieve what they were just told is the 'norm'.
Basically if a new player asks a question, they are immediately given the end game route, not one that he can learn and evolve within the game with. How often have we seen here that a new player asks a question concerning combat and is told to stack massacre missions because it is the latest meta, or they have a question about exploration and directed to head to the guardian sites to get the GFSDB. I honestly don't know whether it is just misplaced good will or over-the-top bravado and boasting but it isn't helping these new players.
For example, recently a new player asked a question about engineering and it was clearly evident that he had no idea about collecting mats, especially RAW mats on the surface of a body. But instead of being told how to fit an SRV, what types of bodies, how to identify which ones are landable or even what 3rd party tools are available to find the nearest body with the mats he needs he was bombarded with advice to travel 12,000 lys to the shards. Sure that is one way to get RAW mats but the poor guy probably hadn't travelled more than a 100lys or so. But no, the experts were adamant that heading to the shards is the only real way to get the mats. So naturally when a new player asks about a way to earn credits, instead of being told how to trade, how to mine, how to explore, they are flooded with details of the latest meta on how they can earn 500m credits per hour or something. And they naturally believe it, not realising they need ships they don't have yet, rank they don't have yet, reputation they don't have yet. Then they get jaded because they 'fail' to achieve what they were just told is the 'norm'.
Basically if a new player asks a question, they are immediately given the end game route, not one that he can learn and evolve within the game with. How often have we seen here that a new player asks a question concerning combat and is told to stack massacre missions because it is the latest meta, or they have a question about exploration and directed to head to the guardian sites to get the GFSDB. I honestly don't know whether it is just misplaced good will or over-the-top bravado and boasting but it isn't helping these new players.
Agree, although I'm not sure how it should be handled in a game like Elite. I've been playing Dayz a lot recently, where everything is lost on death and it makes the game overall very intense. Don't think I'd like that in Elite because of engineering, but there needs to be some form of loss beyond the pittance I currently lose even in my most expensive ship. I don't think more monetary loss is the way to go either, since the solution to that problem is a very boring gameplay loop of grinding money. The mmo format of Elite makes this a tough problem to solve.
Don't need to go far. Just go back to the payout of ED in the first 1.5 years. It was reasonable then, except mining and combat needed a boost (then someone went overboard with mining and started us down this rabbit hole). Remember the ships were priced for that level of income (5 years ago). The ship prices haven't moved but income is now 1000 times better - makes zero sense, from a game balance or in-game economy angle.
Frankly, no game, even mmos should have grind. Grind happens because online everlasting games and mmos don't have enough content to fill that time. So you get the same content over and over again dressed up sometimes in different ways. If an activity is fun and you can do it for a reasonable amount of time, that's not grind, that's gameplay. But no MMO/Online ever game like elite has enough crafted gameplay to fill that time. Hence, grind.
For a lot of people, it's a prestige thing. "I was able to grind and suffer to get this, so rather than being a matter of how mind numbing an investment I'm willing to make, I want this to feel like a prestige skill thing and be inaccessible to as many others as possible!"
Sure, if you're an experienced player with a big ship at which point you SHOULD be making 200 mill an hour OR MORE. Lets see, to acquire and outfit a corvette (ignoring of course the massive grind to get the rank for it) That's around a billion credits. (not to mention the time you'll spend engineering the thing.) SOOOOOooooo 2-3 hours? That's fifteen hours of gameplay to get up the billion to outfit a corvette. Many games don't even LAST fifteen hours. And that's 15 hours of doing the same repetitive thing over and over, not 15 hours of exciting missions, journeys, ect.
And to get even a base model carrier that's 75hours. If you play every night for two hours (Which is more than many people can) That's more than a month of gameplay to earn a carrier. Is a carrier worth an entire month of your free time? That's the thing: Does the time invested equal the reward, when there are lots of other things you can do with your time? That's what really drives whether or not a game is successful.
Spot on.
Dunno why FDev felt the need to ruin progression but it genuinely was THE best part of the game.
Said it before (a lot) but, for me, the best time I had in ED was when I was flying a Cobra, bought an AspX, and could barely afford to keep both flying.
With every successful mission I'd have to consider whether it was better to buy, say, an upgraded weapon for the Cobra or sink the credits into upgrading the thrusters or shield on the AspX.
When you take on 3 or 4 missions and think "Man, I really need these missions to go right or it's going to set me back days/weeks!" it is properly exciting.
Thing is, there's no "top tier content" waiting for you once you're flying an Annie or Corvette.
The game is the same regardless of whether you're flying a Cobra or a Corvette.
By giving everybody almost unlimited credits, FDev have eliminated a lot of the decision-making a player needed to do, which kept the game exciting.
I recall when I first started playing, the "easy credits" choices for earning credits were data-delivery missions which payed something like Cr300 each.
Now, as soon as you start, a player in a Sidey can take similar missions which pay Cr300,000.
Which means a new player can, literally, take on 20 data-delivery missions, complete them and they're into a Cobra or well on the way to an AspX.
+EDIT+
I guess the problem FDev have, now, is that the need to provide content that allows players to bankroll their FCs without it becoming a full-time job.
That means the same content is likely to grant players oodles of credits to spend on regular ships.
I'm sure some people will object but I'd say FDev need to come up with entirely new content, specific to FCs.
That way, they could dial down regular earnings but still provide lucrative content for those who need to bankroll their FC.
Maybe set it up so there are FC-specific missions, somehow?
Perhaps bulk-haulage missions with 1000Ly travel etc?
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If that would make the game more intense I'd agree, but it would just make it more tedious. Grinding money isn't the best part of Elite by a long way. And its because of people that do (like you alluded to) that it's this way to begin with.