I don't know my dude, you stubbornly refuse to answer my question and instead keep rambling about the same old thing. So I'm gonna stop here. Stay safe.
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Allow buying and selling Mats
- Thread starter Spacegamejunkie
- Start date
Thank you.
I want to answer this and add this bit in too:
In my first post, I talked about a slow progression, I mentioned that this request around 'removing the grind' nearly always boils down to combat, and although I hadn't expected to hear that your Daughter was winging up to go kill Thargoids, I thought perhaps maybe massacre missions, it is still combat. Ok, hold that thought, quick diversion.
In a lot of RPG games, you do some basics, earn a skill point. These skill points enhance your abilities. You get a few of these under your belt, you're feeling good, a bit "I'm hard Bruce Lee" and you decide to venture into a new region and add to your body count. You discover an opponent that you cant beat and have no chance of beating until you unlock a certain point on the skill tree. So back you go, completing other tasks, possibly more mundane ones, unrelated to the one you have in mind, until you have that skill point unlocked, then you march off to claim your victory.
For me, enabling easier access to mats is handing you 30 skill points off the bat, in a game where YT get rich quick videos already handed you 30 other skill points. Maybe it isn't YT videos you have been watching, perhaps you have been apprenticing under the watchful eye of your Thargoid hating Father
The reason I included the remark about 'Playing the game', is, although some people come to this game with a very fixed idea of either what it is about or what they want to do in it, it is in fact not about one thing at all. It is certainly not centred around combat. It has plenty of chances to do combat, in a variety of ways but it is not solely a combat game.
So mixing up my games, we start in Elite, we have to work through a skill tree of sorts and I get it, you just want to go and kill that guy over there but you need to go do other stuf to earn the skill points. If all you can see is that opponent, then everything else looks like an obstruction. But if you take the time, explore what rewards are available from certain mission types, what trade loops can you find/create. You're playing the wider game.
The 3 basic components of the game, as indicated in the right hand panel are Combat, Trade and Exploration. If your focus is on combat, you're really only playing 1/3 of the game. In my game, I started with trade, I wanted to build up enough funds to get to the point where I could sweat over the decision between Krait and Python. I couldn't take the big 10-20m paying out missions, they were ranked high above me, so I mixed some trade with exploration. Exploring planets, finding geological sites, adding them to my Codex, oh, and look, if I shoot a few, I pick up some mats. I was playing the whole game. Even combat, because I couldn't take big Elite ranked trade missions and survive attacks, so I picked lesser ones that had less advanced enemies coming after me.
My meandering answer leads to this point, playing the game, this game, is about variety. If you only use one tool to build a house, it is going to feel like a long painful process. If you only add one more tool, you double the speed.
I don't know why she chose Thargoids, but no complaints here. The Thargoid conflict is probably the best overall design aspect of the game. The guardian unlocks do a pretty good job of exposing you the exploration side of the game. There are relatively few Engineering unlocks + Guardian Tech you need to engage Scouts and Cyclopes, and a trade-based/mining CG or two would get you all the credits you'd need to buy a ship.
But...
The overall progression/grind aspect of modern games is simply wrong-headed at best or manipulative at worst. I think the most positive spin I could put on it is the idea of programed instruction - where you slowly introduce new content so the player has the time to master each new feature before moving on. (e.g. Early RTS' did this by slowly introducing new units as you progress through the campaign). The grind in ED clearly goes way beyond building functional skill. Grind in ED serves primarily as content padding with (the I hope unintended) side-effect of stroking ego's (e.g. look how hard I "worked" for my Cutter). Two anecdotes: The Thargoid Huntress' sense of accomplishment on figuring out the Guardian Sites (game-play) utterly crushes the feeling she got unlocking her first Engineer (grind). This could have easily been flipped by replacing the grind-for-mats requirement with a few short story-driven quests and a puzzle. She saw the HealiesforFeelies video and requested we built appropriate ships to try it out - another puzzle to solve. I guess that's probably the complaint. Grind isn't engaging gameplay - 8 exotic focus crystals is arbitrary. Why not 80? Why not 1? And don't get me started on random rewards...
I'm more than a little familiar with RPGs. I'd argue 5e is objectively better than any other edition because it minimizes power creep (compared to other editions), has a relatively simple rule base that covers pretty much anything you'd want to do in game, and has no real grind/leveling requirement to inhibit storytelling. "Leveling up" as a narrative driver is a relatively new concept, and not a very satisfying one. In no game I have every run did a player get more satisfaction from leveling up to beat "the monster" than they did from coming up with a novel solution using tools they already had access to.
At a guess I think the grind/level-up creates an artificial sense of achievement, but why inflict this on ED? Master cold-orbiting (or F/A off orbiting in general) and you've "leveled -up" for real. Likewise learning the inverted economy that drives trade in ED.
Should be visible once you have mapped the planet, which is done from super cruise.
No, because:
1. it would completely destroy any reason to harvest mats if the price were too low, and
2. would completely botch the credit economy even more if set too high, and warp the value of activities which currently reward materials drastically
And the kicker is there's no middle ground in terms of price that makes sense. The upper-bound price needed to overcome point 1. is higher than the lower-bound point needed to be overcome point 2.
e.g A G5 mat needs to be priced higher than 5-6m mark given the current availability of credits, but lower than 1-2m so as not to leave the reward economy in a state where you can just sneeze and earn a billion credits (just nominal figures to illustrate the point).
And look how well that's gone for the game
Seriously, mining is proper-screwed still, because the effort-reward scale for different commodities is broken to all hell, while trading continues to be a static mess.It takes just as much effort to get, say, Methane Clathrates, as it does Osmium, yet the latter pays orders of magnitude more. More broadly comparing these conditions against each other:
Methane Clathrates vs Osmium
Yet Osmium pays out orders of magnitude more. That makes no sense whatsoever, given those conditions.
As for trading? Here's the formula for finding the best profit margins: Pick one of Gold/Silver/Palladium, trade that. That's it, end of story. Those goods fetch you a guaranteed 8-12k in virtually any state combination, with the only good coming close to that being Military Grade Fabrics at =~ 10k a pop in a very specific, non-static state condition.
All those neat effects like boosted profits on Food in Famine/Blight, Medicines in Outbreak? Won't get you more than 3-4k and are virtually ignorable.
Methane Clathrates vs Osmium
- MC's have very high demand compared to Osmium
- MCs have low(er) supply than Osmium due to lack of hotspots
- Equally difficulty to obtain (though the argument could be made MCs are harder)
Yet Osmium pays out orders of magnitude more. That makes no sense whatsoever, given those conditions.
As for trading? Here's the formula for finding the best profit margins: Pick one of Gold/Silver/Palladium, trade that. That's it, end of story. Those goods fetch you a guaranteed 8-12k in virtually any state combination, with the only good coming close to that being Military Grade Fabrics at =~ 10k a pop in a very specific, non-static state condition.
All those neat effects like boosted profits on Food in Famine/Blight, Medicines in Outbreak? Won't get you more than 3-4k and are virtually ignorable.
FD's balance pass made all the usual careers have one "big money" spinner, while ruining the internal balance of each of those activities
Mining: Os/Plat/Pain farming
Trading: Gold/Silver/Pal trading
Combat: Massacre Stacking
AX: Cyclops Gibbing
Exploration: Road to Riches
These are all substantial, unbalanced outliers within their professions. All the ability to buy and sell mats would do is increase emphasis on these credit farm grinds and make the economy a hotter mess than it already is.
Besides... it's pretty clear the design of materials is as a secondary currency (and a third is coming with Odyssey), so this is never happening anyway.
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And is that a bad thing why? Grinding mats is one of the weaker gameplay loops of elite.
Once again, I don't see why this is bad. It'd start a dynamic new economy in game.
If the price is too low or you don't like the grind, you just buy the mats from farmers and save yourself the time.
If the price is too high, you can just go and farm the mats for yourself or, what I think likely will happen, you'll be able to make very decent profit from ultra rich commanders who cba farming the mats. Transferring money from the rich to the poor and opening new ways of credit making can't be a bad thing. Once again, if you do enjoy farming them you can go and farm yourself, just like before. If the price is too high, you can also farm yourself like before or even make a profit out of it.
Don't really see a bad thing about it really
It could be somewhat exploited with RMT -> credit transfer with carriers -> buying mats. But then again that's on FDev to combat RMT. The system would add a new facet to Elite.
EDIT: another downside would be the facilitated quick credit transfer between commanders, which for some weird reason FDev is against as they never really implemented an economy into the game nor a credit transfer option. I think that's actually a pro but I'm likely a minority.
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Then write what you really want; remove materials and just make all upgrades purchasable with credits. That's what you really want with that statement.
Hold up a sec. Are we talking buying and selling to NPCs or players? OPs suggestion seemed to be about NPCs, which had been my focus so far.Once again, I don't see why this is bad. It'd start a dynamic new economy in game.
If the price is too low or you don't like the grind, you just buy the mats from farmers and save yourself the time.
If the price is too high, you can just go and farm the mats for yourself or, what I think likely will happen, you'll be able to make very decent profit from ultra rich commanders who cba farming the mats. Transferring money from the rich to the poor and opening new ways of credit making can't be a bad thing. Once again, if you do enjoy farming them you can go and farm yourself, just like before. If the price is too high, you can also farm yourself like before or even make a profit out of it.
Don't really see a bad thing about it really
It could be somewhat exploited with RMT -> credit transfer with carriers -> buying mats. But then again that's on FDev to combat RMT. The system would add a new facet to Elite.
EDIT: another downside would be the facilitated quick credit transfer between commanders, which for some weird reason FDev is against as they never really implemented an economy into the game nor a credit transfer option. I think that's actually a pro but I'm likely a minority.
If we're talking player trades, then no, i don't see a "dynamic market" surfacing because the supply of materials is static and constant; people follow the same (bad) guides to harvesting materials "optimally" (lol). It's not dynamic in the slightest.
People get in their heads that a player-run market is a dynamic one; that's false. All markets have their equilibrium for a given set of circumstances, and Elite's circumstances are almost entirely static. A player material market would just exacerbate the issues with it even more.
So no, none of what you describe sounds good... it sounds ignorant of the realities of the game which, when factored in to its current state, makes this a god-awful idea.
Is there a state for Elite where a material market, either player driven or npc driven could work? Absolutely. Is the game anywhere near that necessary state? Absolutely not... it would require substabtial rewrites of, well, almost every mechanic in the game.
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The daughter thing came from the other chap I quoted in the thread.
I really wasn't saying that ED is an RPG game, I am saying however, that it does have a progression, not the same but similar. I disagree that you can do almost anything from the get go. No matter which way you cut it, you start in a Sidewinder and you're not taking 'Deliver 180 tons' missions within the hour. I mean, you could, but it is extremely unlikely and could take a week to complete. So you do have to progress by doing other things. Start with courier missions, maybe scanning local systems, to get cash, the 'rank up' into a better Sidewinder, or ideally, a better ship to take on the more lucrative contracts.
Starting in a Sidewinder and being frustrated that you're not in a position to own an FDL with all the lush bits on within a day is (slight exaggeration) is something I see on here a lot. A lot of people seem to want to be able to access all the top equipment within a week.
It is only a grind if you are focussed on achieving one thing. These mats and money can be accrued by doing other things.
This is a more interesting point. In other games, you are rather led by the nose to discover skills and abilities, normally, in my experience, by some clunky bit of story. ED has no story at all, this is why we get threads like this a lot: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/where-the-hell-do-i-go-now.565210/#post-8950005
Again with this grinding. Lets say you want to build a combat ship, no other part of the game interests you, then yes, of course, you're going to have to collect a lot of money and materials to do that, but you're only playing 1/3 of the game. By playing the other 2/3's you can naturally come by a lot of these things.
FDEV will probably say no to this just because you're supposed to be acquiring mats by playing the game.
It's a part of the game you're actually missing out on by buying mats for credits.
Again, as long as we have premium ammo synthesis, mats are the gate keeper to an immediate 30% buff to weapons that use ammo. A 30% power creep instantly the moment you allow players to pay credits for mats. You may as well just sell premium ammo at stations at that point.
Credits are not a gate keeper past very, very, early game anymore. Mats however, have remained as a gate keeper. Right now, you have to stop pretty regularly and collect mats if you want to run premium ammo on a regular basis.
I said it a few pages ago, but I will say it again. Allow us to buy mats with credits, and I, as well as many other mid to late gamers, and pretty much every ganker you come across, will be running premium ammo nearly all of the time. So, if you wanted to play in open, you would have to compromise your non combat builds even more towards defense/escape to maintain parity. Get rid of that cargo rack, because you need another HRP.
Credits are not a gate keeper past very, very, early game anymore. Mats however, have remained as a gate keeper. Right now, you have to stop pretty regularly and collect mats if you want to run premium ammo on a regular basis.
I said it a few pages ago, but I will say it again. Allow us to buy mats with credits, and I, as well as many other mid to late gamers, and pretty much every ganker you come across, will be running premium ammo nearly all of the time. So, if you wanted to play in open, you would have to compromise your non combat builds even more towards defense/escape to maintain parity. Get rid of that cargo rack, because you need another HRP.
200 mil Cr / Hr is the ceiling for #2. Not sure about gather rates for G5s generally, but using the most abusive methods on Raw Materials (G4) gives something like 2-4 million Cr per Raw. Agreed that this is unlikely to happen, but other than being a massive credit sink for those who want that 30% buff this is just changing the farming activity, not the time spent farming.
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yes, but saying so is blasphemy, so people still desperately try to game the system indirectly with these suggestions, and i can't blame them ...
suggestions section, best place to rant!!
This will not happen. For an unknown reason since the first days of Elite Dangerous Frontier does not feel up offering much player interaction beside in combat.
You're saying that in ignorance of the activities accompanying collection, e.g like I pointed out with assassinations. Such a change would set the cr/h ratio at closer to 500m+ for that activity (and that's ignoring any salvage from an assassination target)
Stop thinking of just material collection and just the material farming activities that trash guides give out. Even then, things like barnacles and crystal sites would go through the roof compared to that 500m/h.
Also as I said before, the mission reward calculation is Total Pool = Credits + material value + cargo value (+inf and + rep values)
When Materials are pumped up in value, what are you going to do with missions? Make their reward pools massive, so a planetary surface scan offers 40m+ or 2m + 5 x G5 materials? Or are you going to nerf missions even more and change it so that you get far lower material rewards, once again placing the emphasis on the usual credit metas?
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kill the caps wilya
Just make them cross tradable.
Don't dumb the game down too much, the smart players will leave.
I am saying that with the full knowledge that if ED cared about balance in any meaningful way then yes Mission Reward pools could be rebalanced so that there was little arbitrage between which farming activity you engaged in. The numbers are almost beside the point 200mil/500mil - its not the numbers, its the relationship between them. The fact that you can point out the imbalance provides the solution. Is Frontier going to do it? Hell no, but its eminently doable.
Normalizing materials into the economy without creating a new Cr farming meta and without decreasing time spent farming (whatever it is you like to farm) to fund your materials-spending habit. That's the suggestion. It'd improve the game. It'd encourage another pass and CR/hr balancing, and that'd be a good thing too. You don't even have to go for wholesale rebalancing to get there. Allow people to buy but not sell Materials and you avoid half the problem with the remaining problem being pick an expected Cr/Hr activity and divide by hours desired for farming.
The most obvious objection I keep seeing is the idea that you could avoid certain parts of the game by playing certain other parts of the game. That strikes me as an odd objection for what's billed as a "sandbox" game.
Knowing FD. Never gonna happen.
Materials are the actual in-game currently. Credits are out of control since a long time.
Point in case: some of my friends only, after a long absence, started really playing again around X-mas. Before that, they were in Eagles and Vipers. Now over the last weeks, when they decided to actually now play the game in force, made money at a rate which is crazy, compared to old times.
And it's not even some weird and obscure "make money fast" exploits, of which we had oh so many. They merely organize the wings and how they stack up massacre missions. Which compared to some alternatives, is still not that fast, yet they now already decided to save up for a fleet carrier.
Compared to that, engineering still includes some progression. Mind you, i immediately agree that if you want to progress fast, it turns into an ugly and revolting grind. I immediately agree that it's absolutely crazy and over the top power creep and should be massively cut down.
So if FD ever decides to nerf engineering, i'm all for it. But making engineering materials accessible for credits is not what i'd support. Things are bad enough without this.
Point in case: some of my friends only, after a long absence, started really playing again around X-mas. Before that, they were in Eagles and Vipers. Now over the last weeks, when they decided to actually now play the game in force, made money at a rate which is crazy, compared to old times.
And it's not even some weird and obscure "make money fast" exploits, of which we had oh so many. They merely organize the wings and how they stack up massacre missions. Which compared to some alternatives, is still not that fast, yet they now already decided to save up for a fleet carrier.
Compared to that, engineering still includes some progression. Mind you, i immediately agree that if you want to progress fast, it turns into an ugly and revolting grind. I immediately agree that it's absolutely crazy and over the top power creep and should be massively cut down.
So if FD ever decides to nerf engineering, i'm all for it. But making engineering materials accessible for credits is not what i'd support. Things are bad enough without this.
If only games worked like that.
Players have very different views on a game as this thread shows quite well. There are activities that some players simply find boring and others see it as a financial opportunity that's worth the time. Farming of ANY kind in ANY MP game is quite often the profession of very few players who want to make money and don't mind the grind to get it. That's why so many MP games like WOW, Everquest and such have trading houses, those who don't mind grinding the mats to sell can do so, others who want to get on with playing the rest of the game can also do so.
Personally, I don't want to be forced to spend weeks grinding mats so I can then play the part of the game that I enjoy most, I have a tendency to quit due to boredom and never come back. That's exactly what happened to me with WOW and Everquest. There were some things you were forced to grind since they could not be transferred from player to player and therefore, trading them in the market was not possible and it could take months before you finally got that drop. One player I spoke to in Everquest said it took him nearly a year to get just one drop that he needed and it happened to be the same item I needed, that's when I quit the game. Not much point in playing any longer if you can't progress until you find that rocking horse
you've been searching for. RNG is the curse of EVERY gamer.Buying and selling mats should NEVER be done player to player, that makes it too easy for RMT. All materials traders should be NPC's in NPC stations, not on Carriers either. Supply and demand dictates prices, just as it would in a real economy. It also prevents scalpers wrecking the economy with outrageous prices like they did in Eve Online.
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Great Post, I could not have said it better.
Bottom line is, Everyone is different with likes and dislikes on Their Game play.
And everyone has a Opinion on how They think it should be, based on their Personal view.
And all are correct, for their personal game play, just don't put everyone in your box.
Just Give the Option for Players to choose How and What they like to do.
My Opinion is: Allowing Mats to be Sold or Bought, would give ALL players, Beginners to Elite,
more Freedom with their Game Play.
This could also Give FC owners an opportunity to Earn Funds or Upgrades for their ships.
Maybe Material Traders could also Buy and Sell Tritium, and offer missions to Deliver to FC's.
Take off the Blinders and lets give Freedom of choice to All.