Greetings Commanders,
Back with another instalment of Discovery Scanner for you today, recapping a little of next week, along with some housework style information around subtle changes to Twitch Drop cadence and a little more.
Here's the full article for your consumption: https://www.elitedangerous.com/news/discovery-scanner-13022023
A little request:
Following a little derailment in last week's Discovery Scanner thread, can I politely ask that comments in here aren't drawn toward a holding ground for discussing known issues and queries too far out of discussions around the article, please?
It's not that we don't want to hear them or read them, it just helps a lot to keep those conversations in relevant areas of the Forum (for the sake of my personal brain, more than anything).
Thanks so much for understanding and here's wishing you a super week ahead, please!
o7
I am sorry for 'abusing' the thread, but I feel like I'm out of options when it comes to visible feedback.
One of the most persistent problems currently in the game, detrimental to the community, the spirit of fair play and immersion: Combat bonds are permanent and Community Goals do not discriminate between locations and times the bonds were acquired.
While it's an old issue, it became much more prominent with the drastic change of combat bonds in Odyssey - they cannot be lost.
Since the massive increase in Thargoid combat related lore, the CGs calling for destroyed Thargoid craft amassed like never before. Salvation, Azimuth, nebula colonies, probably the new Aegis, soon.
There's one thing that all these CGs have in common - they're impossible to lose.
I do not see any point or benefit in initiatives that jump to tier 1 and guaranteed success in the first two hours, which is always the case.
I can tell you that right now, there's several players in the game who are able to complete a Thargoid combat CG solo, with combat bonds from days gone by.
Additionally, in the past there were competitive CGs between two groups, with one side accepting pre-farmed combat bonds (multiple billions from ground combat CZ) while the other side had to start fresh and without ground CZ.
I assume that the reason is a lack of insight and understanding of the game, not malice, but that's no excuse, unfortunately.
To me, it seems that there's just a few possible explanations for why this problem is not getting the attention it deserves:
- It's technically complicated and gets the be-quiet-treatment
- It allows the devs to create the illusion of choice and consequences, knowing that not a single one of these CGs can fail
- The CMs and devs actually don't know about it or don't understand how it affects the game and the community
While I complained about it in the past, I gave up eventually, because I accepted that the creators probably just don't have the possibility to tweak it.
Turns out, I was wrong.
Recent changes to the Thargoid war system mentioned in the official stream (or upcoming ones? I don't know because I couldn't care less) indicate that the developers do in fact have the possibility to track the source of things like commodities and bonds.
So why would it be so hard to 1) fix combat bonds and/or 2) fix CGs so they don't accept pre-farmed combat bonds?
I'm just coming back from a trip where I lost 2,5 billion in exobiology data due to a blackscreen while my fuel was running out.
While this is on me, for the most part, I wonder how it's possible that scanning plants North of Sag A* has a higher risk factor than fighting a millions of years old type 3 civilization flooding the bubble through witchspace conduit gates?
Because the way the game is set up currently, there's literally zero risk in fighting the Thargoids.
You can just shoot em, dock at an attacked outpost in the middle of the fight, repair, continue shooting, make cash.
In case you die, you just keep your rewards anyway. I'm sorry to let the salts flow, but it's plain idiotic.
I distanced myself from the game a lot since the story started to become a one-dimensional recycling plant, and the release of "Aftermath", because of questionable decisions for the future of the game and its lore, as well as disrespectful treatment of
parts of the community, in favor of the more easily accessed and more easily pleased target groups of pew pew, as I call them. And while this means that I am emotionally biased, obviously, the reasons for rigged CGs and pre-farming combat bonds being bad for the game and its playerbase are actually very factual and in-your-face. It just seems that this issue got a taboo stigma and is being avoided by the team, or not realized at all, as stated above (to the amazement of the few dozens of players who take advantage of it).
The effects of this issue are openly visible in the forums, the game itself, the discord servers, and easily accessible for everyone on inara. While the devs should have their own ways of analyzing the situation, it seems, to me personally, like they don't even have the level of insight that a casual player gets from looking at an inara graph for a minute, which is puzzling.
Please, for the love of Elite, communicate this issue in the team, and give some feedback on it, rather than ignoring it for over two years.
With best wishes
Coehoorn
