Patch Notes Update 2.3 Beta 5 Change Log

[Soulkiller]

• Bounty Vouchers and Combat Bonds are now awarded to MultiCrew members based on their combat rank

If only the first 3-4 ranks are affected by this, I am fine with this change. If that's not the case, then this change is crap.

 

[Crashdive]

Yep. Knew it was too good to be true, you guys were surely going to drag it down with something.

[yesnod]
I was thinking the exact same thing!
Instead of some constructive feedback (I didn't say there isn't any), it's all about "I don't like this", "Can you change that" , "How about bringing back xyz feature."
No wonder the FD's just sit there shaking their heads...

 

[3m@nnon]

Scaling credit reward with rank is a solid game design decision. Stick to your guns FDev, you have this Cmdrs support.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I disagree, I put it to you that people who actually enjoy doing fun things aren't harming you in the slightest and that you and your super tedious ilk are the ones constantly trying to get the game ruined because you know you'll be the undisputed kings of a game that's so boring only dullards like yourself would put up with it. So why don't you pick another game?

imo i think all types of gamers are valid...... but some games appeal to different types. This isnt me trying to be offensive its to an observation.

making everything super fast (ie within 100 hrs) is game destroying for those whos aim is to ultimately get everything they can, BUT want this to be a long term game.
making everything super slow (ie 3000 hrs to get JUST to the most expensive ship in the game) is game breaking for those who want to have everything in the game super quick and just see this as a short term "12 monther or less"

neither is wrong per se so i think the answer is to go back to the original pitch of the game , the dev diaries, the DDF, the KS ptich and see what type of game they were buying into.

imo that is the only honest and fair thing to do.... BUT

Agree with me, disagree with me what ever, that is cool, its what discussion is for.... but please all i ask is dont throw out that old thing of "making everything super quick has NO EFFECT on anyone elses game"... this is simply .. either a lie or grossly deluded.

How FD choose to balance things like income, and miltiary / pilots federation progression and AI difficulty and general complexity of the mechanics of the game...... all of this effects every single player, Look at ED 1.0.. imo THAT was the kind of progression FD initially visioned in the game. perhaps a little too stingy but over all it meant we had to consider wear and tear, whether to fix our ship or not....... was a mission profitable enough to use a python or should we risk it by doing in an adder instead.

or, i know i can win this fight but i may take a pounding doing it..... is it worth it?..

All of the above is gone now. the experienced players still sometimes fly the smaller ships, but that is purely for "fun" there is NO "official" (ie other than player organised events) gameplay reason to do so, NO ONE who is RPing in their right mind would dream of doing a mission in an eagle if they had a vulture, and this is largely due to all the balancing that has been done to make everything simpler.

 

[LKx]

Scaling credit reward with rank is a solid game design decision. Stick to your guns FDev, you have this Cmdrs support.

If you want to kill an already limited and questionable feature, yes, of course.

 

[dreampage]

So after thinking about it, my question is this: My combat rank is Dangerous. That means I've been fighting quite a lot in the game already. Am I still not entitled to get 100% bounty if fighting in multi-crew? And if the captain of the ship always gets 100%, can it happen that he gets more bounty per ship than me, even though he has a lower combat rank? Do only Elites get 100% bounty or how will this work exactly? What if someone has already played a lot, has a huge ship but he/she has still a low combat rank. Is he/she not entitled to get the same amount of bounties, even though he/she has the playing experience? This is a hard question because I understand the intention behind the design decision but it can be tricky to determine who's really a new player and who has only a low combat rank. Not to mention even if someone is a new player, he can quite quickly get a good BH ship and start hunting even Elites (Eagles or Sidewinders for example) with good bounties. Then why would he hop into multi-crew if he can make much more by himself or in a wing?

I'm not for or against this decision at all, in fact I'm quite impartial at the moment. But I think it would be a good idea to clarify because if commanders have to work this out by themselves by testing then there will be many more disappointed players.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

So after thinking about it, my question is this: My combat rank is Dangerous. That means I've been fighting quite a lot in the game already. Am I still not entitled to get 100% bounty if fighting in multi-crew? And if the captain of the ship always gets 100%, can it happen that he gets more bounty per ship than me, even though he has a lower combat rank?

IF the ship you are in blows up the captain has to carry the cost of that (though i really think the magic reduced insurance has to be dropped, its a horrible horrible gamey mechanic with no grounding in any logic for the game economy).

The crew on other hand as a hologram lose nothing. There is the balance right there......

I have said in other threads, far better to balance by having high paid missions which are super hard and need wings OR multicrew ships to stand a chance to fly in and "clean out an area" before returning and handing in and splitting everything fairly (mission pay AND bounty) rather than any of the implementations so far. (however this is tied to the need for npc equivalents to do the roles otherwise you are locking players out of content)

The only exception to this, imo the Pilots Federation could pay a 5 or 10% flat fee to every player in a wing / multicrew on top of what bounties are earned after being split evenly (or possibly balance payment as a portion of the "work" they have done - maybe too gamey as well???). The logic behind this flat fee would be the same as for trade dividends. the pilots federation pay our insurance, and more people in a wing / on a ship the less the chance the insurance has to pay out... therefore there IS a logical reason why the pilots federation could give a small boost to profits for wing play or multicrew but not the boosts seen in the early betas imo

 

[Ian Skippy]

So after thinking about it, my question is this: My combat rank is Dangerous. That means I've been fighting quite a lot in the game already. Am I still not entitled to get 100% bounty if fighting in multi-crew? And if the captain of the ship always gets 100%, can it happen that he gets more bounty per ship than me, even though he has a lower combat rank? Do only Elites get 100% bounty or how will this work exactly? What if someone has already played a lot, has a huge ship but he/she has still a low combat rank. Is he/she not entitled to get the same amount of bounties, even though he/she has the playing experience? This is a hard question because I understand the intention behind the design decision but it can be tricky to determine who's really a new player and who has only a low combat rank. Not to mention even if someone is a new player, he can quite quickly get a good BH ship and start hunting even Elites (Eagles or Sidewinders for example) with good bounties. Then why would he hop into multi-crew if he can make much more by himself or in a wing?

I'm not for or against this decision at all, in fact I'm quite impartial at the moment. But I think it would be a good idea to clarify because if commanders have to work this out by themselves by testing then there will be many more disappointed players.

The helm risks his ship, het should get 100%. Crew risks nothing, they get less. plus crew can just jump into a ship already un res. Crew is currently just for combat, so its not just avout being a new player or not, its about combat experience.

 

[This Forum Sucks]

making everything super fast (ie within 100 hrs) is game destroying for those whos aim is to ultimately get everything they can, BUT want this to be a long term game.

See, this right here is exactly why I suggest you (and the rest of the "progress should be slow or everyone will leave when they reach the biggest ship in a [arbitrary time period]" crowd) should find another game - it sounds like you don't enjoy this one at all, or else why would you consider the game to be "over" once you've bought all the ships?

making everything super slow (ie 3000 hrs to get JUST to the most expensive ship in the game) is game breaking for those who want to have everything in the game super quick and just see this as a short term "12 monther or less"

I don't think most people look at this game and go "ok, so I don't care in the slightest about how fun the moment to moment gameplay is, what I want to know is how long will it take me to buy all the ships so I can stop playing forever", that's just a baffling viewpoint to hold.

neither is wrong per se so i think the answer is to go back to the original pitch of the game , the dev diaries, the DDF, the KS ptich and see what type of game they were buying into.

imo that is the only honest and fair thing to do.... BUT

Agree with me, disagree with me what ever, that is cool, its what discussion is for.... but please all i ask is dont throw out that old thing of "making everything super quick has NO EFFECT on anyone elses game"... this is simply .. either a lie or grossly deluded.

How FD choose to balance things like income, and miltiary / pilots federation progression and AI difficulty and general complexity of the mechanics of the game...... all of this effects every single player, Look at ED 1.0.. imo THAT was the kind of progression FD initially visioned in the game. perhaps a little too stingy but over all it meant we had to consider wear and tear, whether to fix our ship or not....... was a mission profitable enough to use a python or should we risk it by doing in an adder instead.

or, i know i can win this fight but i may take a pounding doing it..... is it worth it?..

All of the above is gone now. the experienced players still sometimes fly the smaller ships, but that is purely for "fun" there is NO "official" (ie other than player organised events) gameplay reason to do so, NO ONE who is RPing in their right mind would dream of doing a mission in an eagle if they had a vulture, and this is largely due to all the balancing that has been done to make everything simpler.

Has it occurred to you why there is a near total lack of super punishing space sims with glacial rates of player progress, unintuitive mechanics and obtuse interfaces?

That aside, you're describing a game that never existed - it has always been the case that the more expensive/bigger ships are almost certainly better in every circumstance, the only thing that gave people pause about using them back then was they had less money for rebuys. Sure, if they'd kept all the stupid stuff that was in at launch like repairs being so costly that losing your shields was almost as bad as losing your ship or the exact same fuel costing much more per tonne for bigger ships then some people might have given up before they got rich and it might have taken longer overall for most players to reach the "post money" stage of the game but make no mistake, it would still have happened eventually. That's the problem you have by measuring the game's worth entirely in terms of "how long until I can say I've completed it" - sooner or later you will reach whatever you consider to be the end point and I'd argue it'd be hard not to be disappointed when that happens.

And before anyone jumps in with "well if you're having fun you shouldn't need to get paid", that isn't the issue - if getting paid was all I cared about, I wouldn't be doing combat in the first place, I'd be trading. It's a question of comparison. Take the current, non-beta situation: I can either bounty hunt solo or with 3 friends - since most of the time, the limiting factor on bounty hunting income is ship spawn rate, you don't get significantly more kills when in a wing so being in a wing earns you a lot less money but I do it anyway because (when wings actually work) the fun from playing in a group is worth taking a pay cut for. Now consider 2.3 (in it's current beta state): I get the same money in a wing as I do solo, so the question becomes do I bounty hunt with 3 friends or 2 friends? Well already there's a huge black mark against multicrew - if our usual group of four is all online, it's not an option. Ok, so let's assume that one of us is busy - we have to decide between having fun and making money or having fun and not making money and which way do you think that decision is going to go once the novelty of multicrew has worn off?

The only thing that is achieved by slashing multicrew incomes is players are punished for the convenience of the feature - people will still be able to help newbies skip the early game (just dump some high end cargo for them), people will still be able to earn while afk (using multicrew no less - if you're getting money for nothing, you won't really care how much), people will still be able to earn from combat with little/no risk (by following their friends/the police around and not firing until the target is about to die). Hell, if not having to pay for rebuys is the issue then just subtract the cost of any rebuys from crew earnings at the end of the session and the problem is solved entirely.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Hell, if not having to pay for rebuys is the issue then just subtract the cost of any rebuys from crew earnings at the end of the session and the problem is solved entirely.

Calm down. Take a seat. Have a cup of tea. Breath in, then slowly breath out again. Now look at this 'suggestion' of yours and think about it. No really, do it. Consider a few hypothetical situations, then run the numbers. See? Now next time do this before posting it. Your 'solved entirely' suggestion is so obviously daft, you're clearly more interested in proving others wrong than being critical of your own ideas.

 

[This Forum Sucks]

Calm down. Take a seat. Have a cup of tea. Breath in, then slowly breath out again. Now look at this 'suggestion' of yours and think about it. No really, do it. Consider a few hypothetical situations, then run the numbers. See? Now next time do this before posting it. Your 'solved entirely' suggestion is so obviously daft, you're clearly more interested in proving others wrong than being critical of your own ideas.

Haha, really? The old "why are you being so hysterical" line? I tell you what mate, instead of being insufferably smug and pretending you've got a counterargument, why don't you actually offer a counterargument and then we'll take it from there because right now, it seems an awful lot like you don't have a counterargument.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Haha, really? The old "why are you being so hysterical" line? I tell you what mate, instead of being insufferably smug and pretending you've got a counterargument, why don't you actually offer a counterargument and then we'll take it from there because right now, it seems an awful lot like you don't have a counterargument.

I wanted to give you a chance to show you could spot it yourself, but ok. When you say 'just subtract the cost of any rebuys from crew earnings at the end of the session' you presume that the cost of the rebuy actually is a smaller number than the crew earning. Because when you subtract numbers, the first number has to be bigger than the second number, or you'll end up with negative numbers. Thats how subtracting numbers works. And its frankly rather boring to see yet another one who's been on a crusade recently against stupid FD fail to understand how subtracting numbers work. Worse, when given the chance to fix it you'd rather go straight to personal insults. Its boring, really. So while you patch your 'solution' up with some ad-hoc new rules, I'll go do something more interesting. Maybe someone else will be willing to shoot holes in your next 'entire solution', but I cant be bothered.

Maybe next time take the time to sit down and think things through before launching your Superior Solution. Or not, I dont care. You're not an FD game designer, so your errors arent really my problem in any way.

 

[This Forum Sucks]

I wanted to give you a chance to show you could spot it yourself, but ok. When you say 'just subtract the cost of any rebuys from crew earnings at the end of the session' you presume that the cost of the rebuy actually is a smaller number than the crew earning. Because when you subtract numbers, the first number has to be bigger than the second number, or you'll end up with negative numbers. Thats how subtracting numbers works. And its frankly rather boring to see yet another one who's been on a crusade recently against stupid FD fail to understand how subtracting numbers work. Worse, when given the chance to fix it you'd rather go straight to personal insults. Its boring, really. So while you patch your 'solution' up with some ad-hoc new rules, I'll go do something more interesting. Maybe someone else will be willing to shoot holes in your next 'entire solution', but I cant be bothered.

Maybe next time take the time to sit down and think things through before launching your Superior Solution. Or not, I dont care. You're not an FD game designer, so your errors arent really my problem in any way.

You know, you could have saved us both some time and hostility if you'd just asked:

But Pilchenstein, doesn't your proposed solution presume that the cost of a rebuy is actually a smaller number than the crew's earnings? Presumably my larger concern here is that players might end up having money taken away from them at the end of a multicrew session and not, as I've inexplicably stressed instead, that you don't understand subtraction.

To which I might have replied:

Oh, allow me to clarify: when I say "crew earnings" I specifically mean the money they are due to be paid upon exiting the multicrew session and yes, I make an inherent assumption that such an amount would have a lower bound of zero credits, meaning that nobody ever loses money from joining a multicrew session. It's just a common sense anti-griefing measure, after all. I'm actually surprised I had to clarify this to you, since I explained as much in another thread, in a post you yourself quoted in its entirety.

And I'm sure we can both agree that would have been a far more productive exchange.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

See, this right here is exactly why I suggest you (and the rest of the "progress should be slow or everyone will leave when they reach the biggest ship in a [arbitrary time period]" crowd) should find another game - it sounds like you don't enjoy this one at all, or else why would you consider the game to be "over" once you've bought all the ships?

of course i enjoy it.... its why i am pushing 1500hrs in and STILL dont have a rated conda yet....... ED was always pitched as a slow burner one which would attempt to be plausible - within the confines of its own sci fi setting of course. like i said, have you read the original pitch of the game...... how do you think that fits with your view of how the game should be? the elite universe arguably has as much maritime stuff at its core as it does space travel. The sidewinder is possibly comparable to a fishing boat the anaconda an aircraft carrier. I have no problem it taking 1000s of hrs to save up for an aircraft carrier given i started out from a fishing boat.

I don't think most people look at this game and go "ok, so I don't care in the slightest about how fun the moment to moment gameplay is, what I want to know is how long will it take me to buy all the ships so I can stop playing forever", that's just a baffling viewpoint to hold.

the moment to moment gameplay is essential... but Elite is far more about the journey than the destination........... and by given everyone insane earning potential arguably cuts short that journey.

Has it occurred to you why there is a near total lack of super punishing space sims with glacial rates of player progress, unintuitive mechanics and obtuse interfaces?

Has it occured to you that is EXACTLY why FD did the kickstarter to see if there was interest in such a game... and is also 1 reason why they self published because they said a major label would insist on "streamlining it".... h

Sure, if they'd kept all the stupid stuff that was in at launch.

that is your opinion... 1 persons stupid is another persons "interesting risk/reward" decision.

if you have the time i ask you to look at the following video. it is how i dream space legs would be in elite. my fear however is people (possibly such as yourself, possibly not would look at that video and say it is "stupid" with too much micro management having to waste time thinking about pointless tasks.... it is this attitude which has led us to the mess that is multicrew in ED imo ....... cutting out all of the "rubbish" or " unintuitive mechanics and obtuse interfaces" as you call them to give an easily accessible game is to me another way of saying "cutting out any complexity and giving a shallow throw away mechanic which COULD have been so much more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiO3o6cIDuQ

BTW (time will tell but for now your guess is as good as mine) given how much Star Citizen is charging for ships and LTI, do you think money to buy ships in Star Citizen will come faster or slower than in Elite Dangerous?.

its a long time off still but eventually i think SC will be a slower burning game than Elite is when it comes to progression, unless you put your hand in your pocket or join a huge player guild to give you some stuff

 

[Ian Skippy]

Has it occured to you that is EXACTLY why FD did the kickstarter to see if there was interest in such a game... and is also 1 reason why they self published because they said a major label would insist on "streamlining it"....
[...]
if you have the time i ask you to look at the following video. it is how i dream space legs would be in elite. my fear however is people (possibly such as yourself, possibly not would look at that video and say it is "stupid" with too much micro management having to waste time thinking about pointless tasks.... it is this attitude which has led us to the mess that is multicrew in ED imo ....... cutting out all of the "rubbish" to give an easily accessible game is to me another way of saying "cutting out any complexity and giving a shallow throw away mechanic which COULD have been so much more.

"Thanks for funding this game, now roll over and lets turn it into space-CoD."

 

[ejames]

Bounty Vouchers and Combat Bonds are now awarded to MultiCrew members based on their combat rank

2.3 is starting to look like one of the worst releases ever. They are adding several nice features but ruining them with things like this and the big 3 shield nerf. This will doom multicrew to the same fate as CQC.

 

[This Forum Sucks]

"Thanks for funding this game, now roll over and lets turn it into space-CoD."

Am I safe to assume that by ignoring my response you're admitting that you don't have a real, non-hyperbolic counterargument to my "take rebuys out of pay" suggestion then?

Has it occured to you that is EXACTLY why FD did the kickstarter to see if there was interest in such a game... and is also 1 reason why they self published because they said a major label would insist on "streamlining it".... h

I'd suggest you're not remembering that entirely right either mate, they went to kickstarter because no publisher would go for space games these days, that's true, but show me any point in the marketing of this game where they've said "only hardcore sim fans need apply" because all I ever see is them appealing to bigger and bigger audiences which, when combined with streamlining some of the systems post-launch, doesn't really paint the picture of a company whose aim was to make a small, niche game that would only appeal to a small market of die-hard fans. You can't claim that they're both shrewd enough to be cutting a bold, exploratory path of their own and easily swayed enough that any criticism, no matter how slight, might throw them off course, that's just ridiculous.

that is your opinion... 1 persons stupid is another persons "interesting risk/reward" decision.

So you think repairs being so costly that you always had to flee combat before your shields dropped was an "intersting risk/reward decision"? Because Frontier clearly didn't agree. And at the top of your post you lauded the game for its "plausability" and yet you're going to defend two identical tons of fuel costing vastly different amounts based on the size of your ship?

if you have the time i ask you to look at the following video. it is how i dream space legs would be in elite. my fear however is people

I'm genuinely not sure if you realise this but you're deluding yourself. Every part of the game that matches your vision is Frontier sticking diligently to their vision but every part of the game that deviates is the fault of pernicious whiners who just don't realise what a beautiful thing they're ruining.

Final say on game design rests with Frontier and Frontier alone and all any of us on the forum can hope to do is sway their opinion with our arguments. If you want to say that Frontier cave too easily to forums backlash, then I'd agree with you entirely (I'd suggest that their current silence over the specific numbers this system should be using is down to them being caught between two backlashes) but I'm not going to pretend that only one side ever gets their way or that they should never listen to feedback.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I'm genuinely not sure if you realise this but you're deluding yourself. Every part of the game that matches your vision is Frontier sticking diligently to their vision but every part of the game that deviates is the fault of pernicious whiners who just don't realise what a beautiful thing they're ruining.

Final say on game design rests with Frontier and Frontier alone and all any of us on the forum can hope to do is sway their opinion with our arguments. If you want to say that Frontier cave too easily to forums backlash, then I'd agree with you entirely (I'd suggest that their current silence over the specific numbers this system should be using is down to them being caught between two backlashes) but I'm not going to pretend that only one side ever gets their way or that they should never listen to feedback.

no no no! I do not blame "whiners" I started my input in this thread on the basis that everyone has a right to their view without getting y at other people and other people getting y at you. You are no more a whiner than I am. We DO both want Elite to be a very different game however and the game is consistently going further from the game at launch and imo it is because they are trying to appeal to short term players rather than long term ones. This MAY be the right thing in terms of revenue, but not all games have to cater to the casual crowd, just look at the plethora of games which have a very small niche but seem to do well... ETS2 / ATS / DCS / FSX

Any changes to the direction of the game i put squarely on the shoulders of FD. As to where i got my vision of the game from..... you need to look no further than the Design Decision Forum (which was later renamed which should have got alarm bells ringing)

look at the DDF and point me to where there was any mention of holograms fast travelling across the entire galaxy, 3 or 4x multipliers on bounties etc etc etc Thank god FD saw sense and reverted back to the DDF plan for ship transport (I fully expect you to disagree with me there!)

everything in the DDF and Dev diaries painted a picture of a game trying to built a consistent and believable economy NOT manure farmer being the most profitable trade goods in the universe. . As for the price of fuel, and repairs..... i agree perhaps some of the prices were a "little" harsh but baby out with bathwater comes to mind now.

any price differences of fuel i put down quite simply as different gradings of fuel - something we have in real life now, and something Frontier had with the military fuel. indeed it was one of those areas i expected to be "fleshed out" over time rather than battered to the point of irrelevance.

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

I'm just here for a little salt

 

[CMDR Rhatigan]

Anyone able to clarify this line? "Audio fix: Megaships having a loud sound and outposts events not loading issues"

Apologies if I missed it, but do outposts (bars, prisons, hospitals, etc.) have certain events that spawn? Is there something to do once you get there line dynamic missions?