News Changes Coming to Multi-crew

[Dutchman141]

This is how you react to trolling behaviour in the game, the things said about the disruptive actions by FD sounded incredibly naive or ignorant even, their measures to counter this fun ruining phenomenon is quite the opposite.
Well done FD!!!

o7

 

[Lobstris]

So.. have somebody else sitting in a chair, increase your pips, almost double the total payout and lower your rebuy costs all at the same time?
Oh well. It's just a game. No need for believability...

but... but... you can't have 'believability' because your ship travels faster than light, and you have instant transport on death!. Keep up. [Yes, I'm using sarcasm on the internet. It works so well I find...]

 

[Ford Solo]

You don't get it?

Because we're not talking about the captain, gunner or cleaner of a ship. We're talking about people playing a game in their free time. They have options and all of their time has the same value. By giving them ingame paycuts based on role in a cooperative activity, you discourage cooperation.

Free time is the most valuable player resource. Players may chose how to convert that into ingame things. Fun, fooling around, rank, credits. If you present them with something like Wings has been for the longest time ("yeah, play together if you will, but you will greatly slow your ingame progression") and an alternative that does not gimp credits, you clearly don't want them to engage in the gimped activity too much.

Humans min-max. Not everybody, all the time, but they will do.

I assume MC was NOT conceived primarily as a new way to earn credits. It's a new way to have fun, specifically for those players who want a more social experience. As with all things in life, the more enjoyable it is, the less likely it is to pay well, otherwise everybody would do it. It makes sense that the least exciting things to do in the game are also the most profitable, otherwise nobody would ever, EVER do those things. I know I would never do a passenger mission or mine asteroids or do trade runs if I could make just as much money in the same amount of time doing combat.

Personally I like how the design somewhat forces you to decide between varying levels of fun versus profit in each and every activity. I'm a risk manager by trade, it's in my DNA to understand that you can't have increased reward without increased risk. Likewise, you can't have more fun without less toil and the profit that comes with it. IF you want to build a career-oriented game that is more than just combat, that is.

 

[Flavourless]

The increased payouts for crew members that don't even have to do anything are grotesque in my opinion.
Games should reward participation, but this just encourages freeloading. Disappointing collapse.

And yet NPC crew continue to bleed our resources even though they are inactive?

The mind boggles.

 

[Abomination]

but... but... you can't have 'believability' because your ship travels faster than light, and you have instant transport on death!. Keep up. [Yes, I'm using sarcasm on the internet. It works so well I find...]

Heh, yeah, I've seen these before as well

True about that instant transport though.. the player should have a rescue pod with normal rocket engines and fly to the nearest station at sub-light speed

 

[Lana]

This is an improvement but I don't understand why players will be penalized for playing with a helm of higher rank.

Also who cares about rebuy reduction in multicrew? Never saw anyone asking/caring about that but I may have missed it.

 

[AnotherVoice]

Nope, the original direction that was to have delayed transfer just like we have now. Michael Brookes indicated they had only gone for instant transfer because of the lower effort needed, so really just like this constant messing with rewards, instant transfers was yet another producer-level decision to please the unwashed masses at the lowest cost.

Actually ship transfer was originally planned to be delayed. They just wanted to make it instant because they didn't have time to implement it properly.

EDIT
ninjad

Very well then, if it was really planned that way, why didn't they say it clearly when they first introduced the feature on the 2.2 livestream ? (i can still hear the voice of Sandro in my head saying "instantaneous" and talking about Type 9 and nearby conflict zone)

 

[babelfisch]

Very well then, if it was really planned that way, why didn't they say it clearly when they first introduced the feature on the 2.2 livestream ? (i can still hear the voice of Sandro in my head saying "instantaneous" and talking about Type 9 and nearby conflict zone)

Maybe my post wasn't clear enough:
Their original intention was to make ship transfers delayed, but they didn't announce anything. They realised that this requires more work and decided against it. They then told you that ship transfer will be instant. The forums went nuts and told them this is a stupid idea, Sandro told us that they agree and that their original plan was to make it delayed and went on with it.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Maybe my post wasn't clear enough:
Their original intention was to make ship transfers delayed, but they didn't announce anything. They realised that this requires more work and decided against it. They then told you that ship transfer will be instant. The forums went nuts and told them this is a stupid idea, Sandro told us that they agree and that their original plan was to make it delayed and went on with it.

Don't forget the official poll which returned a 70%/30% result in favour of delayed transfers (on a turnout of c.38,000 players).

 

[X-Terminator]

So, I'm still trying to figure this one out. I have say a bounty of 100,000Cr and 3 Crew of ALL RANK DANGEROUS and we all get 80% right?
Doesn't that add up to 240% meaning the Bounty got 3D Printed to 240,000Cr?

 

[babelfisch]

Don't forget the official poll which returned a 70%/30% result in favour of delayed transfers (on a turnout of c.38,000 players).

It wasn't fair!

 

[Momoka Azuka]

Do you not think a pay cut is fair when you have 0 risk being crew of someone else's ship? How is it fair to the helm to have all the risk of losing their ship and the crew gets the same reward?

Risk is not a problem for me. But there's way to many things being sacrificed for the sake of flying on a friends ship. No faction rep, no BGS influence, no missions. Credits is all there is to gain from it. I'm better off just bringing my ship to where ever because of all of those things. Point is to me it's asking too much of me just to take part in it.

 

[babelfisch]

So, I'm still trying to figure this one out. I have say a bounty of 100,000Cr and 3 Crew of ALL RANK DANGEROUS and we all get 80% right?
Doesn't that add up to 240% meaning the Bounty got 3D Printed to 240,000Cr?

AFAIK helm still gets 100%, regardless of crew rank, so you get 260,000Cr with 160,000Cr being 3D printed, just like your telepresence crew mates.

 

[markuslig]

"It makes sense that the least exciting things to do in the game are also the most profitable" ??? that was a weird comment.
I should make a billion a minute shooting rocks for those damned engineers

 

[Kaocraft]

I know people have been hand-wringing endlessly about the multicrew payouts and "Why Won't You Incentivize Meeeeeee!" etc, etc; but in my experience the biggest threat to Multicrew's ongoing success is not going to be lack of crewmates it is going to be lack of Helmsmen for people to crew *with*. Right now all the incentives that matter (convenience, risk-free, instant cash), are on the crewmate side of things. I guess people feel ripped off that they don't make as much money as the person at the helm, but what about the Helmsman in the first place? What's their incentive besides the novelty of it? The reduced rebuy is nice and so are the extra weapon pips but when all is said and done two random strangers flying your launchable fighters are usually going to be less effective than a single AI-piloted fighter, not to mention a greater liability.

As a fighter pilot, I was happy with the 50% payout cap and I'll be happy with the new 80% when that rolls out. What I'm less happy about is the difficulty of finding a Helm to crew with; and this is a problem I expect is going to get MUCH worse as time goes on and the novelty factor wears off. Improving Helm rebuy and giving more control over permissions is a good start, but in my opinion it's going to take a LOT more "incentive" on the Helm side of things to keep multicrew alive.

Are there any additional plans in the works to make *hosting* a multicrew session into a more attractive proposition?

 

[Ford Solo]

"It makes sense that the least exciting things to do in the game are also the most profitable" ??? that was a weird comment.
I should make a billion a minute shooting rocks for those damned engineers

Weird? Really? LOL. I thought it was a fairly graspable concept. Income is an incentive. If you enjoy what you're doing, you don't need as much incentive to do it. If you hate what you're doing, you do require more incentive to do it.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I know people have been hand-wringing endlessly about the multicrew payouts and "Why Won't You Incentivize Meeeeeee!" etc, etc; but in my experience the biggest threat to Multicrew's ongoing success is not going to be lack of crewmates it is going to be lack of Helmsmen for people to crew *with*. Right now all the incentives that matter (convenience, risk-free, instant cash), are on the crewmate side of things. I guess people feel ripped off that they don't make as much money as the person at the helm, but what about the Helmsman in the first place? What's their incentive besides the novelty of it? The reduced rebuy is nice and so are the extra weapon pips but when all is said and done two random strangers flying your launchable fighters are usually going to be less effective than a single AI-piloted fighter, not to mention a greater liability.

As a fighter pilot, I was happy with the 50% payout cap and I'll be happy with the new 80% when that rolls out. What I'm less happy about is the difficulty of finding a Helm to crew with; and this is a problem I expect is going to get MUCH worse as time goes on and the novelty factor wears off. Improving Helm rebuy and giving more control over permissions is a good start, but in my opinion it's going to take a LOT more "incentive" on the Helm side of things to keep multicrew alive.

Are there any additional plans in the works to make *hosting* a multicrew session into a more attractive proposition?

I dont disagree, but its interesting to contrast this with the 'noone wants to be a crewmember!' rhetoric we saw before beta launched.

 

[saab]

How about making it possible to launch 2 SLFs with players? The arbitrary restriction to one active player SLF is quite disappointing.

And how about making the Keelback multi-crew capable?

 

[BurnyBurns]

It's not your business either. Why do you think you should dictate how much new players earn?

Mh, why would I want a new - or really, any - player to not be discouraged from participating in an activity by means of wasting their time vs. a comparable activity that does not waste their time?

I have nooooo idea. You tell me? You can also tell me why I would crew up with my colleague who got the game more recently, instead of telling them to take a Sidewinder, do marginal damage while staying out of the heat of it and making full profit for all the immense risk of their free Rebuywinder. Or why the very same kill death ratio for a "harmless" crewmember in a "harmless" helm's ship (e.g. trader switching to PvE) is substantially more profitable than if they happen to end up in an Elite player's ship?


It's intransparent (unless that table in OP is clearly communicated in the game before joining a ship) and arbitrary paycuts for the exact same time investment and even activity. Really sensible and respectful of your player's time.

Not.

Edit: OK, OK, OK. Let's not be fatalistic. It's all good, because the players still have full agency. Ignore multicrew, play in Wings, get maximum credits while still having a bit of social PvE experience, problem solved, case closed.

That was easy.

 

[Infidel Deity]

Good show, Ed!
Thank you!