Since Hadad's destruction and subsequent changes to Thargoid content, namely, adjusting combat bonds for Thargoid interceptors, the downstream consequences have done more damage than anything you intended to "fix". By reducing Orthrus payouts from 40 mil to 15 mil you have made spire sites far less enjoyable for credit farming, not that it was all that enjoyable to begin with what with countless pilots playing laser tag and chaining shutdown field over shutdown field. Now, the majority of anti-xeno players have shifted focus to surface ports. Surface port invasions had the best passenger rescue missions which was the second best way to farm credits but now that is gone too because they simply don't last long enough for a player to build up the reputation among the present factions to get access to the highest mission payouts. And before someone chimes in with "but you can still do missions from outposts" I use a Cutter with 204 passenger capacity to stack as many missions as possible to make it worthwhile and I can't land at outpost stations. Stop fixing things that aren't broken and maybe fix the things that still are like all the persistent bugs in Titan space in multiplayer.
All your attempts at balancing Thargoid content has unintended consequences
- Thread starter KingArthurFleck
- Start date
One workaround here is to build up the reputation in advance
At the moment next week's invasions are expected to be at:
Cocijo: Laumas, HIP 37520, Col 285 Sector YT-F b12-3
Thor: HIP 18857, Unktety, HIP 21724
Raijin: Nu Guang, Holvandalla, Bormuninus
(with the Raijin ones least likely to be averted or diverted by anything players happen to do this week)
Get your Allied rep now while they're clear of Thargoids, then cash in once the Invasions start.
Or maybe spire sites were not intended to be a mindless credit farming experience by players who otherwise didn't care for the war (or just not the spire sites themselves beyond "muh money"), but to be consciously used as a tool to progress the war against the Titans with. If you're just there to farm billions of credits which you will never use, what were you doing committing to a gameplay loop you yourself admitted to finding boring?
And they recently made another attempt at fixing the Titan bugs, in case you missed it.
And they recently made another attempt at fixing the Titan bugs, in case you missed it.
I don't think you are grasping the reality in game. Like I said in my thread, I use a 204 pax Imperial Cutter so that rules out outposts. Am I supposed to build up rep in all these locations in the hopes that when it turns to invasion status one of them is a surface port?? Also, you are missing the point that now since Orthrus combat bonds were nerfed all the focus has shifted from spires to surface ports since nobody likes dealing with thargon swarms. So even if I was lucky enough to gain rep in advance of a system with a surface port invasion it gets cleared so fast that I'll MAYBE get one or two attempts to stack missions. So the effort to build rep everywhere for the slightest chance at grabbing surface port rescue missions somewhere isn't worth it. Also, it is one the reasons Indra is taking so long because it is easier to just farm Thargoids at surface ports. So, no, it's not a workaround and it kind of shows a lack of detailed understanding of the current situation in game since all of the Thargoid "fixes"
Bud, intended or not players farm credits were credit farming is good and I did NOT say I farmed credits at spire sites. I haven't been to a spire site since before Hadad and the reason is that they got swarmed by noobs who didn't know what they were doing so try not to imply what you don't know and also maybe the idealized game world where players don't farm credits exists somewhere but not in ED.
The point I was trying to make is the downstream consequences of nerfing Orthrus combat bonds payouts. It has had a direct affect on alerts, invasions, surface port rescue missions and even the progress on Indra. To be fair the July 4th holiday had a little to do with that but not as much as players following the path of least resistance to farm credits and that is currently surface port invasions and NOT spire sites which has created more imbalances that it tried to fix. Why do you think Fdev updated alerts and invasions last week? To try to fix the fix, duh
That's the entire issue right there. You refuse to adjust to a changing battlefield.
FDev made Thargoid content available to more players with the adjustments. That's a good thing.
Those adjustments make it harder for you to do things the way you want to. You chose to complain instead of adjust to it. That's a you thing.
I can't adjust to a thing that no longer exists do to the anti-xeno credit farming player base shifting focus from one thing entirely to another because of a single change. And there is NO point switching to a Python for rescue missions at outposts since it's not worth it. Like I said there is a reason there was a quick fix last Friday to alerts and invasions since the previous fix and I guarantee you there will be yet another fix.
And I am not complaining I am pointing out a big picture view of the consequences one change had on many other aspects of the game which was not intended hence the recent attempts at adjusting last Friday, which again, will likely be adjusted further and by bringing it up maybe, just maybe something closer to true balancing can be achieved. And finally to your comment of my use of a LARGE ship to take advantage of stacking more pax as opposed to a MED ship at outposts is ridiculous. Surface ports have large landing pads and pax rescue missions for a reason. Are you suggesting I just throw my hands up in the air and say, "Oh well, the spire pirates have taken over surface port invasions because of Orthrus nerfing so I should just forget about it and move on using a smaller less efficient ship"??
I agree
We should remove the players from the game. All they do is break things over and over. All was working fine. Then they started the stupid sampling. Then the stupid oreo farming. Now they refuse to rescue people in a medium ship cause there are large ships in the game!
The only thing players care for are credits.
We should remove the players from the game. All they do is break things over and over. All was working fine. Then they started the stupid sampling. Then the stupid oreo farming. Now they refuse to rescue people in a medium ship cause there are large ships in the game!
The only thing players care for are credits.
Again, this isn't about credits. I understand that those in the anti xeno community working towards making a titan vulnerable did not like the sampling. Funny enough that was a balancing issue. Fdev, after Hadad attempted to rebalance Thargoid content so that players weren't just doing sampling over and over, not because it was the only option but because it was the most effecient. Now, they have had to rebalance AGAIN last Friday since the shift from sampling to and spires to surface conflicts created yet ANOTHER imbalance. So now I predict since both the samplers and spire pirates are focusing yet still on surface conflicts that there will be more balancing in the future. Are you picking up yet what I trying to put down?? Nobody is calling for a player ban. That is you being dramatic and unable to have a debate. Well done
You are fighting to preserve mankind from destruction, the galactic economy is suffering from the impact these payouts are having, and you are complaining about credit farming? Oh lol!
Once again, and again, and again no I am not complaining about credit farming. I am trying to demonstrate what happened when a small change like reducing payouts for Orthruses created many unintended consequences admittedly so even from Fdev. If you were paying attention, immediately after the Orthrus payout reduction, the anti-xeno community shifted focus from spires and sampling to alert systems and, ironically, NHSS 4 with Orthuses. This caused rapid proliferation of alert systems before they could evolve into invasions. Then, last Friday as I am sure you recall, we got a surprise update which was intended to "fix" the previous update so that Thargoids could skip alerts and go straight into invasions in human populated systems. So now, most of the anti-xeno community focuses on surface conflicts. What these two past updates have done is completely wipe out surface rescue missions. If you yourself did not participate in this mode of gameplay you likely don't care but some, like myself, do. So the whole point of my thread was not complaining about the loss of credit farming at spire sites, it was pointing out how one small and unnecessary change, likely brought about by others complaining, has causes more problems than it intended to fix. So when I wrote the line you quoted in order to attack me you missed the whole point of the debate. Other players, especially new players trying to save up to buy fleet carriers and whatnot used spires to farm credits. Not that balance has shifted greatly and has negatively affected more than the changes intended to fix.
And one more thing, the galactic economy is suffering??? Really... Are there not enough fleet carriers being built to meet demand?? Are there not enough 15% discounted class 8 modules for sale. Can people not get a satisfactory price for platinum or tritium. This game doesn't have an auction house like wow. There isn't any real peer to peer economy in this game so please, and I am being sincere, tell me in a constructive way how the previous Orthrus payouts was negatively affecting the in game economy
Not the in-game economy. It refers to a GalNet article from er... yesterday, which says the war is affecting the economy (but that is clearly not reflected in the game itself). See here -
Superpowers Talk on the Financial Impact of War - Elite Dangerous
Vox Galactica has released an in-depth piece about the economic impact of the Thargoid war on the galaxy’s superpowers. Senior Political Journalist Va...
Oh look, this just got released this morning LOL So yeah, this is the shift I am talking about.
Dude, I don't even know what point you were trying to make. And by the way, I am not in any way blaming players for anything. Players will always follow the path of least resistance, Mechan's video proves that and there is nothing wrong with that. I am talking about the cascade effect one change has on so many other parts of the game, most of which is unintended, which is why we had a fix to the fix last Friday and we will continue to have rapid fixes. How these fixes play out is anyone's guess but so far they are not panning out in any balanced way
You're correct that one came after the other, but I don't think your conclusion that this move (or the resulting complete shutdown of invasions) was because it had the higher payout is necessarily correct. A substantial amount of the military effectiveness - if not necessarily player count or activity count - comes from the organised groups who aren't primarily in it for the money.
An important point of the May rebalance is that Frontier also made numerous rebalances to the war effectiveness per action of every single action type in the game, with the collective aim of making the Thargoids considerably easier to contain and defeat, completely independent of their credit-earning potential. This predictably shut down invasions, yes, just like it did the last time they made the Thargoids easier to contain. (The last time it happened, the main cause was carefully-targeted sampling, which isn't at all an efficient credits earner)
On the other hand, heavy spire+sampling attacks continued (less profitably in the case of the spires, but still intensely!) to destroy Indra's control sphere over the following weeks. Sure, some profit-motivated players may have stopped [1], but war-motivated players were very definitely carrying on. And similarly, many of the major organised groups currently doing a lot to shut down populated alerts and invasions have been doing that consistently throughout the war regardless of payout - it's just more effective now.
[1] Given the change to make spires stop regenerating, they'd have to eventually anyway.
Sure - lots of players like fighting in invasions, because it's one of the easiest ways to contribute to the war by combat, so bringing some back even if the Thargoids are losing ground makes a lot of sense (and has been a player suggestion for about a year...)
Given Paul's comment at https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...r-changes-6th-june-2024.625949/#post-10385969 ... that particular rule change may have been a surprise to some players, but it looks like Frontier had been planning it as a "when Indra becomes vulnerable" move for at least a month.
Also as part of that update: they made Control systems have some invasion-like combat content. If that goes well - starting tomorrow around Thor, in theory - it might draw off some of the combat pressure on the very limited number of invasions and leave more for haulers/passenger carriers to do in those systems.
Of course, in the slightly longer term, spires, invasions, surface attacks, etc. are all apparently on the way out - five Titans down, three to go, they're going to need to pull a fair few more well-telegraphed "surprises" before the "end" to keep any of them going more than a few months longer.
Here is the latest from CMDR Mechan who is well respected in the AX community. I'm not posting this to complain, it is just to show that even for those players who have 10's of billions of credits it is still one of the largest motivators. And Mechan is right, surface ax conflict zones, esp those with low gravity are FUN. But now that these zones are not only fun AND they contribute more to weakening Titans AND they are now the best way to farm credits, the other fun and lucrative playstyle, that being surface passenger rescue missions is going to take a MASSIVE hit. This is the original point I was making. That, with good intentions, the actions of the devs to tweak thing has unintended consequences. I myself don't care about farming credits, I have enough to keep a fleet carrier maintained till the day I die IRL However, I am saddened that the unintended consequences are taking the bulk of the AX community from one farm site to another. Fix one problem but create more in it's wake. This happens IRL too, so.....
Stop seeing everything from a "grind credits" perspective.