This is not an antagonistic piece so don't worry, but there are some things that certainly need reflection on with the current Beyond instalment.
what initially sparked this was with the current CG I have done CZ missions for the first time since 2.4 Return update, where in prevention of mission stacking the rewards were increased slightly per mission to compensate. as of Beyond, these elite missions worth quite a lot of credits have been reduced to 1/10 of their value. furthermore these I found cannot be stacked to compensate the harsh drop, we were not informed of this change. arguably this is still with low rep with the power, but even then the requirements are not adding up to the effort (80 kills for 2M non-stackable) now I have to eliminate 200 targets in a day for the equivalent for one trade run in my Cutter... Not happy but I can make do
Wing Missions were a huge leap forwards in terms of a concept, the ability to participate with friends and players worldwide in your own missions! Except the rewards are less than desirable for the effort involved, for example even with 4 players, killing and waiting for NPC's to spawn still takes a considerable amount of time, you can complete the solo missions almost 2 times over for twice the credits in the same time. trade missions suffer the same fate as it almost seems that it is expected that every player has Trade Cutters and is ok with a really shoddy payout for doing numerous run. and there is absolutely no incentive to do these missions solo either...
an ideal fix would be to have a higher set payout that is variable depending on wing count, (for Example, start with 10M. solo participants receive additional +50-100% of the figure, every wing member extra contributes a minor -5-10% to the figure. so solo would be 15-20M, wing of 2 9M and 4 6M). not obscene but compensates for people efforts that little bit better. this would mean in the case of Soloing Thargoids (Basilisk and medusa) pilots will be paid what they deserve for the kill and not cheated.
Tech Brokers are another great idea. a nice extra endgame time sink with arguably 'some' pretty decent modules! but I did say some...
Shock Cannons, enzyme missiles, meta reinforcements and Guardian power plants are all really cool concepts, unfortunately they are a massive waste of resources. it seems that again the term 'Balanced' was stretched to it's absolute definition with these modules. as these modules have severe setbacks to their pros there is really no incentive to get them as Engineer-able counterparts exist which blow these out of the water...
possible fixes for;
GPP- the power cap was great, but the 0.5 heat rating would turn most ships into ovens, at current my engineered power plants (size 8) hold 45MW (very usable and just shy of the 47MW GGP limit) with 0.4 heat efficiency AND- lighter mass. So whilst players have access to engineers this modules will always remain useless. to fix, drop the heat figure down to beat engineer modules of the same class, it is kind of sad that advanced alien tech has such a significant drawback.
Shock Cannons- Statistics point to this being a gimmick rather than a weapon of choice, yes you can fire a semi-automatic weapon, but it's heat and damage per ammo cap is really, really, really sad. as in you would be lucky to kill a few big ships with the ammo provided kind of sad. it is also un-engineerable resulting in it being totally obsolete in comparison to most weapons of it's class. even if damage was doubled it would be doubtful if it cold be considered a viable weapon. to fix, greatly enhance the ammo capacity with a marginal damage increase. 10-13 damage per shot is still surprisingly low for most weapons, although DPS is player dependant, railguns/ Ihammers could trump this weapon unengineered in most aspects...
MAR- First after hearing the Meta-alloy reinforcement I seriously thought "made of meta alloys, therefore stronger than most engineered reinforcements" I couldn't have been more wrong, unengineerable with absolutely no additional resistances to anything other than caustic (a very low 3%) it's hull is also about the same as standard reinforcements also. possible fix is to greatly improve ALL resistances and hull, it is made from one of the toughest materials we know!!! how did this happen?!
enzyme missile- Again another Gimmick, although in theory it can one-shot NPC's as they cannot get rid of caustic damage, it would take a really, really, really long time. initial impact is 5 damage +2.5 DPS per Sec after impact. The are no statements as to whether this weapons damage is cumulative. if not or very little then this weapon is already beaten by almost every other missile in game for DPS. If so then it could be useful, but again unengineerable with a moderate ammo capacity. even if it were, you would only be able to negate a few targets efficiently. still a fun concept though!
In all the issues stated there is one reoccurring pattern...Balance.
It appears in trying to be fair on everyone with good intentions they also harm everyone. Underpaying them, giving them useless modules, no incentives and so on. Multi-crew is a great example of this balancing failure. everything was so heavily reduced it became worthless to participate. CQC to some extent had no reward or incentive for the main game and thus began to fade out.
In real life this is different, nothing is fair (although very morbid it is very true) we strive to better each other in any way we can whether that would be being promoted at work, building Militaries or developing the next cutting edge technology. if we strived for balance we would never progress... Elite needs to reflect this too.
CMDR Jaylem
what initially sparked this was with the current CG I have done CZ missions for the first time since 2.4 Return update, where in prevention of mission stacking the rewards were increased slightly per mission to compensate. as of Beyond, these elite missions worth quite a lot of credits have been reduced to 1/10 of their value. furthermore these I found cannot be stacked to compensate the harsh drop, we were not informed of this change. arguably this is still with low rep with the power, but even then the requirements are not adding up to the effort (80 kills for 2M non-stackable) now I have to eliminate 200 targets in a day for the equivalent for one trade run in my Cutter... Not happy but I can make do
Wing Missions were a huge leap forwards in terms of a concept, the ability to participate with friends and players worldwide in your own missions! Except the rewards are less than desirable for the effort involved, for example even with 4 players, killing and waiting for NPC's to spawn still takes a considerable amount of time, you can complete the solo missions almost 2 times over for twice the credits in the same time. trade missions suffer the same fate as it almost seems that it is expected that every player has Trade Cutters and is ok with a really shoddy payout for doing numerous run. and there is absolutely no incentive to do these missions solo either...
an ideal fix would be to have a higher set payout that is variable depending on wing count, (for Example, start with 10M. solo participants receive additional +50-100% of the figure, every wing member extra contributes a minor -5-10% to the figure. so solo would be 15-20M, wing of 2 9M and 4 6M). not obscene but compensates for people efforts that little bit better. this would mean in the case of Soloing Thargoids (Basilisk and medusa) pilots will be paid what they deserve for the kill and not cheated.
Tech Brokers are another great idea. a nice extra endgame time sink with arguably 'some' pretty decent modules! but I did say some...
Shock Cannons, enzyme missiles, meta reinforcements and Guardian power plants are all really cool concepts, unfortunately they are a massive waste of resources. it seems that again the term 'Balanced' was stretched to it's absolute definition with these modules. as these modules have severe setbacks to their pros there is really no incentive to get them as Engineer-able counterparts exist which blow these out of the water...
possible fixes for;
GPP- the power cap was great, but the 0.5 heat rating would turn most ships into ovens, at current my engineered power plants (size 8) hold 45MW (very usable and just shy of the 47MW GGP limit) with 0.4 heat efficiency AND- lighter mass. So whilst players have access to engineers this modules will always remain useless. to fix, drop the heat figure down to beat engineer modules of the same class, it is kind of sad that advanced alien tech has such a significant drawback.
Shock Cannons- Statistics point to this being a gimmick rather than a weapon of choice, yes you can fire a semi-automatic weapon, but it's heat and damage per ammo cap is really, really, really sad. as in you would be lucky to kill a few big ships with the ammo provided kind of sad. it is also un-engineerable resulting in it being totally obsolete in comparison to most weapons of it's class. even if damage was doubled it would be doubtful if it cold be considered a viable weapon. to fix, greatly enhance the ammo capacity with a marginal damage increase. 10-13 damage per shot is still surprisingly low for most weapons, although DPS is player dependant, railguns/ Ihammers could trump this weapon unengineered in most aspects...
MAR- First after hearing the Meta-alloy reinforcement I seriously thought "made of meta alloys, therefore stronger than most engineered reinforcements" I couldn't have been more wrong, unengineerable with absolutely no additional resistances to anything other than caustic (a very low 3%) it's hull is also about the same as standard reinforcements also. possible fix is to greatly improve ALL resistances and hull, it is made from one of the toughest materials we know!!! how did this happen?!
enzyme missile- Again another Gimmick, although in theory it can one-shot NPC's as they cannot get rid of caustic damage, it would take a really, really, really long time. initial impact is 5 damage +2.5 DPS per Sec after impact. The are no statements as to whether this weapons damage is cumulative. if not or very little then this weapon is already beaten by almost every other missile in game for DPS. If so then it could be useful, but again unengineerable with a moderate ammo capacity. even if it were, you would only be able to negate a few targets efficiently. still a fun concept though!
In all the issues stated there is one reoccurring pattern...Balance.
It appears in trying to be fair on everyone with good intentions they also harm everyone. Underpaying them, giving them useless modules, no incentives and so on. Multi-crew is a great example of this balancing failure. everything was so heavily reduced it became worthless to participate. CQC to some extent had no reward or incentive for the main game and thus began to fade out.
In real life this is different, nothing is fair (although very morbid it is very true) we strive to better each other in any way we can whether that would be being promoted at work, building Militaries or developing the next cutting edge technology. if we strived for balance we would never progress... Elite needs to reflect this too.
CMDR Jaylem
