An Elite Trader way too fast?

[rhiz]

So in essence, in the game as it stands today, triple elite that used to take a couple of years of shrewdly aimed gameplay can now be punched in in about 40hrs.

Saw a Mostly Harmless trader around the starter systems flying a Type-9. How's that song go?

That ain't working, that's the way you do it
Your credits for nothing and your ships for free!

To be fair though, a low combat rank alone isn’t always a reliable measure of experience. I was playing for about a year and a half and had achieved trade and exploration Elite before I really began engaging in combat. Some of us are masters of conflict avoidance and the Brave Sir Robin.

 

[rhiz]

So in essence, in the game as it stands today, triple elite that used to take a couple of years of shrewdly aimed gameplay can now be punched in in about 40hrs.

Can you offer me any advice on achieving combat Elite more quickly? I've reached 1% Deadly popping Thargoid scouts and I'm losing the will to live. I'm 1500+ hrs into the game.

 

[Riverside]

Can you offer me any advice on achieving combat Elite more quickly? I've reached 1% Deadly popping Thargoid scouts and I'm losing the will to live. I'm 1500+ hrs into the game.

There isn't any need to do it, an Elite rank in any of the main three ranks will get you the Founders permit & the triple only gets you an extra decal to put on your ships (it is a nice decal). AFAIK you are already taking the optimal route by killing scouts so maybe just accept that it's going to take you a while to get all three but potentially not as long as it would have before 3.3.

 

[CAPT. Ho Chi Minge]

To be fair though, a low combat rank alone isn’t always a reliable measure of experience. I was playing for about a year and a half and had achieved trade and exploration Elite before I really began engaging in combat. Some of us are masters of conflict avoidance and the Brave Sir Robin.
[/Q

Many players also chose to wipe their saves when the Ai recieved an upgrade and again when later game updates arrived.

Edit .. i remember when engineers arrived and a few bugs caused some very strange results with Ai firing of some ludicrous weaponry and some chose to ask FD if their combat ranks could be wiped fresh (leaving other ranks and assets intact).

 

[Riverside]

Many players also chose to wipe their saves when the Ai recieved an upgrade and again when later game updates arrived.

Edit .. i remember when engineers arrived and a few bugs caused some very strange results with Ai firing of some ludicrous weaponry and some chose to ask FD if their combat ranks could be wiped fresh (leaving other ranks and assets intact).

I got my Combat Elite in August 2015 (iirc 1.3, before the rank progress bars). Arguably it was easier to get combat Elite then compared to the post 2.1 game, although with engineering & so many undocumented AI re-balances it's difficult to compare more accurately, but it did feel like I was going to be Deadly ranked forever and I considered it a box thoroughly ticked at the time.

I think any Elite rank is only as important as the player who achieves it thinks it is, it is a personal journey. I know what it took to achieve my various goals in the game, some I am unashamedly proud of because they took me out of my comfort zone, others less so. How my number of achievements compare to other players is much less important to me

I think if I (as a new player) earned Trade Elite by following a youtube how-to guide I would not make as much of a song & dance about it as if I had figured out a good way to make money for myself.

 

[rhiz]

The very name of the game, Elite, implies it is a goal to be reached, a rank to be proud of, something that is achieved by striving, hard work and dedication. Elite players were respected because of their long-term experience. That is no longer the case

I’ve always felt that it should be a genuine test of skill rather than endurance or brute repetition though. My combat skills probably haven’t really improved in the last 400 hrs or so, but having just achieved Deadly I’m still a ludicrous number of kills away from Elite. I don't disagree with your general point... I'm just having a moan about the tendency of game designers to stick a number where there should be satisfying and meaningful content.

It's also the cause of a lot of others issues in the game - an unforeseen variable here or there can make a mockery of the whole system.

 

[Stealthie]

Can you offer me any advice on achieving combat Elite more quickly? I've reached 1% Deadly popping Thargoid scouts and I'm losing the will to live. I'm 1500+ hrs into the game.

Have you considered a life of crime?

Take a ship with Collector limpets to the nav-buoy in an Anarchy and space all the trade-ships that drop in.
A lot of them will be deadly/elite, they drop some nice mat's and, erm, they don't really shoot back in any meaningful way.

 

[Leper Messiah]

Am I the only one who couldn't give a rats crack about how someone else get's an Elite status? Why are people so obsessed with how other people play games, or how far and fast they progress? It's a game, not a job.

 

[Duck & Jenny]

Am I the only one who couldn't give a rats crack about how someone else get's an Elite status? Why are people so obsessed with how other people play games, or how far and fast they progress? It's a game, not a job.

If stating one's opinion is obsession, then you might be obsessing about the obsessed. It's a forum, not parliament

 

[Hullreaver]

It is about the changes to the game that have made it too easy and have made multiple ships obsolete. The old progression and having to make choices is gone. The ease of gaining Elite status is a result of those changes and, for some, it has detracted from the game. As the Dude would say, "Yeah, well, you know, that's just like your opinion, man...."

 

[Cmdr Eratosthenes]

Took me months of A-B-A + loop trading to make Elite after launch. Felt like an accomplishment though, all that grind...

 

[Helvellyn]

Every negative of the rift on paper is for nothing once you get to experience being IN your ship.
To each their own but the second I tried a DK1 there was no going back. DK2 was a huge improvement , CV1 a bit better again. IF VR happend to fail now I think racing games and flight games are done for me.

Definitely. It's a great experience in VR. The resolution and screen door effect are indications of a not quite mature technology but it's still a great experience, and we're starting to see better headsets appearing (which is just as well because my Rift is on its last legs).

 

[wAsh67]

All this makes me realise I've been playing this game wrong.

1...Buy game in January sales
2...Ride the winder doing data courier and low tonnage cargo runs to Cobra 3
3...Fly the cobra doing missions to Vulture. Now its February.
4...Use the Vulture to practice combat in HazRes. Made it to Novice in a day but realising I need some engineering to take on more potent prey took me on a detour
5...Rank up in Explorer in the journey to Deciat for Farseer, and the hunt for Meta Alloys. Get the exploravirus and forget about engineering while I viper 4 and rank up to Pathfinder. Then tire of exploring and set my sights on a Challenger for the proper 'Elite' grind.
6...Grind through the rest of February doing haulage missions further and further away from base, get the Challenger.
7...Spend March ranking up in explorer and trade while unlocking engineers, only got Todd the Blaster to level 5 unlocked so far. Test weapons in a Hazres and rank up a little there, surprised at how much easier that is with engineered pulse lasers and multicannons. Met the rebuy screen for the first time when I got cocky....
8...Read this on April 1st at 84% pathfinder, 42% entrepreneur, 65% novice. Got 108M credits banked for rebuys and upgrades.

I play about 6hrs per week when Wifey is doing wifey stuff. I'm three months in and nowhere near where you guys think I should be.

Never mined a void opal. After reading this I don't want to. Seems like it'll take the fun factor and the sense of accomplishment away. (You have no idea how many days it took to get military armour for the Challenger.)

This month I'll be flying about exploring high metal content worlds in the SRV and banking mats for engineering, then doing combat bonds and a little mining to get invites from the next level of engineers.

You can keep your Elite rank races. I'm just going to carry on and let the ranks come in their own good time. I may be playing the game all wrong, but I'm kinda enjoying doing it my way...

 

[Duck & Jenny]

You can keep your Elite rank races. I'm just going to carry on and let the ranks come in their own good time. I may be playing the game all wrong, but I'm kinda enjoying doing it my way...

I'd say you are doing it right. Yesterday I went "grinding" for the first time in a long time for materials to give to engineers, and I was reminded just how much I hate the whole, "Go shoot a rock to get some very common metal to give to this guy so he can improve my gun" nonsensical narrative. If I were ever to start a new CMDR or clear my save, I would be very tempted to say, "Screw Engineers" and play the game the old, hard, slow way. If nothing else, it would keep the game challenging!

My alt CMDR got along just fine without being Elite until recently, when she "accidentally" became Elite in Exploration (which like trading, happens way too fast these days). I don't need no ShinDez to enjoy the game

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

Personally, I think the main reason that the game has got 'Easier' is that it's too easy to get past the early small ships. One big bounty or a couple of missions and you're out of the sidewinder and into at least a cobra. It's a bit of a shame that you miss the small ships because progressing up through the ship tree did give a sense of accomplishment. Remember the whole load of salt around the 2.3 Multi-crew was over newbies being able to get into the big ships for no risk and to be honest all that has gone the way of a dodo. Unless they put in some kind of money restriction based on the ship you have, they might as well let everything off the hook.

 

[Stealthie]

All this makes me realise I've been playing this game wrong....

See, this is the thing...

Any veteran player of ED would tell you that you've got the right idea.
There is no "destination" in ED. The game is 100% about the "journey".
You will, literally, have exactly the same experience while flying a Cobra and earning Cr500k/hr as you get while flying a Cutter and doing, erm, whatever people do in those things.

Trouble is, it's almost impossible to convince a newbie of that.
Instead, they start playing, they see expensive stuff, they want it and - with the addition of nu-mining - they have the ability to get it within hours.
And then they get the stuff, they realise nothing has changed and they wonder what they're supposed to do next.

It's kind of like playing Skyrim and immediately allowing a newbie to craft legendary weapons and armor, go straight up to the summit of The Throat Of The World and slay Alduin.
If that was possible, you couldn't blame newbies for wanting to do it but it would ruin the game.

When it comes to stuff like that, it's up to the dev's to create soft barriers that prevent players from doing stuff they're not indended to be able to do or they risk undermining all the intermediate content they've created, and that's a responsibility FDev seem to have abdicated.

The "best" way to play ED (IMO) is to just do the stuff you enjoy doing and don't try and strive for anything.
By all means, dip into nu-mining to bankroll a specific project (to buy an FdL if you enjoy combat or buy an Annie if you like trading etc) but don't get sucked into feeling you you always need to have more of everything.
Every step of the "journey" in ED is as enjoyable as any other (no more and no less) and there's no "destination" so if you're not enjoying what you're doing in ED then you're wasting your time doing it.

 

[wAsh67]

My take on this - and one I have already shared in the "credits are meaningless" thread - is that veteran players have outgrown the experiences that this game gives to new players. A veteran player may well be able to work up to Anaconda and Elite Trader in two hours including coffee breaks and a pub lunch, but its much more difficult for fresh meat to get off the butcher's block.

The problem I see is that with ED's sandbox structure there is no end game. Instead you can focus on what your personality craves - greed (creds), ego(rating), vanity (ship) and once you achieve it, some (I should put SOME in caps. Oops, just did) want to make it harder for anybody that comes after them to achieve the same, like Amundsen building an unscalable wall around the South Pole so nobody else can get there. "Sorry Scott, you'll have to go find Atlantis instead..."

It seems that veterans that know all the loopholes, short cuts, void opals, golden roads etc object to newer players being able to use these accelerators. That's fine. For the sake of the game I would prefer that - remove all the short cuts. For everybody.

Then let the Thargoids plant a virus in the galaxy's financial district and wipe out everybody's accumulated credits. Then let the Thargoids invade the bubble so that everybody loses ships stored there and has to manage with the one they are in - without being able to use short-cuts to re-equip - so that their experience now mirrors newer players, but they still have the advantage of already having one DeathStar as their starting point. Until they lose it and haven't enough for a rebuy.

And I wouldn't mind betting that the majority of those complaining about aspects of this game being too easy would then turn their backs on it.

What this game needs is refocussing. Forget credits, ranks and super shiny skin jobs for space ships. It needs the Thargoids to get everybody pulling together - whether doing station supply runs as Trader, scouting out ELWs for refugee relocation for Explorers or combat missions for the proper Elite. A lot of people here need to come out of their ivory castles and spend a year in the trenches....

Right, that's this game sorted!

Next!

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

actually you hit on something which could be a lot of fun but is ruined due to all cosmetics being behind a paywall.
playing the game to unlock vanity items ingame by doing in game stuff would be really cool and something i could enjoy doing for many hrs.

but cosmetics i have just bought and not "earned" ingame i have no affintiy for, i have not even got around to putting on some of my paint jobs i bought over 12 months ago.

 

[Rat Catcher]

I'm elite in exploration (Sept 18) and Tycoon in trade, NOVICE in combat... Been playing 11 months so far. So I'm a target for those who think that to fly a Cutter the pilot has to be high combat rated? How silly can folk's notions get!
If I could be bothered to follow the VO mining path no doubt I could be trade elite in a day or so but it doesn't appeal to me, so it'll be earned sooner or later by doing things I enjoy, no problem.
As for combat elite, well - I'll probably be pushing up daisies before I manage that - but then I don't have the interest to go shooting things ad nauseum, I have a high boredom threshold (I even play NMS!) but combat would easily surpass even that.

No issue here with those who believe this is a Combat centred game, just for me it really isn't

 

[Northpin]

I think any Elite rank is only as important as the player who achieves it thinks it is, it is a personal journey.

This ^^^
I got Elite in Exploration in about 2 months. 1-2 weeks later I got Elite in Trading as well.
So what? I didn't pursue those ranks, they simply came in. And the game isn't less of a sandbox because of that.
And i didn't even went to see SD when i got the message that i have the permit.
Actually i went there about 6-7 weeks later when the system was in Outbreak to hunt for Pharma Isolators (meh, found none)

... Instead you can focus on what your personality craves - greed (creds), ego(rating), vanity (ship) and once you achieve it, some (I should put SOME in caps. Oops, just did) want to make it harder for anybody that comes after them to achieve the same, like Amundsen building an unscalable wall around the South Pole so nobody else can get there. "Sorry Scott, you'll have to go find Atlantis instead..."
...

And This ^^^ too