C'mon, this is faintly ridiculous.

[M00ka]

Spot on.

Dunno why FDev felt the need to ruin progression but it genuinely was THE best part of the game.

Said it before (a lot) but, for me, the best time I had in ED was when I was flying a Cobra, bought an AspX, and could barely afford to keep both flying.
With every successful mission I'd have to consider whether it was better to buy, say, an upgraded weapon for the Cobra or sink the credits into upgrading the thrusters or shield on the AspX.

When you take on 3 or 4 missions and think "Man, I really need these missions to go right or it's going to set me back days/weeks!" it is properly exciting.

Thing is, there's no "top tier content" waiting for you once you're flying an Annie or Corvette.
The game is the same regardless of whether you're flying a Cobra or a Corvette.

By giving everybody almost unlimited credits, FDev have eliminated a lot of the decision-making a player needed to do, which kept the game exciting.

I recall when I first started playing, the "easy credits" choices for earning credits were data-delivery missions which payed something like Cr300 each.
Now, as soon as you start, a player in a Sidey can take similar missions which pay Cr300,000.
Which means a new player can, literally, take on 20 data-delivery missions, complete them and they're into a Cobra or well on the way to an AspX.

Yep I still remember the enjoyment I got deciding on what ship to buy, then working towards what credit balance I needed to allow me to buy it. Now, I just purchase ships on a whim, fully A/D grade them upon purchase then never use them after a couple of flights (if that)

 

[Fenwe]

Spot on.

Dunno why FDev felt the need to ruin progression but it genuinely was THE best part of the game.

Said it before (a lot) but, for me, the best time I had in ED was when I was flying a Cobra, bought an AspX, and could barely afford to keep both flying.
With every successful mission I'd have to consider whether it was better to buy, say, an upgraded weapon for the Cobra or sink the credits into upgrading the thrusters or shield on the AspX.

When you take on 3 or 4 missions and think "Man, I really need these missions to go right or it's going to set me back days/weeks!" it is properly exciting.

Thing is, there's no "top tier content" waiting for you once you're flying an Annie or Corvette.
The game is the same regardless of whether you're flying a Cobra or a Corvette.

By giving everybody almost unlimited credits, FDev have eliminated a lot of the decision-making a player needed to do, which kept the game exciting.

I recall when I first started playing, the "easy credits" choices for earning credits were data-delivery missions which payed something like Cr300 each.
Now, as soon as you start, a player in a Sidey can take similar missions which pay Cr300,000.
Which means a new player can, literally, take on 20 data-delivery missions, complete them and they're into a Cobra or well on the way to an AspX.

shakes head Every time I sit down I decide what I'm going to do.

Today it might be to take my Corvette into a compromized nav beacon after picking up some missions to kill pirates, or do it in my Alliance Chieftain instead.

Or use my Cutter and decide hauling supplies to Thargoid damaged stations sounds like a good idea.

Or fly my Krait MK2 to go hunt Thargoids...no I've been doing that for the last week in Wellington - anything but that...

Each ship provides a completely different available choice, or at least a very different feel of the stick when choosing to do something.

Your way just sounds boring to me. I know it gets your blood pumping and I respect that but fudge no.

 

[Fenwe]

Personally, I think at times this very community contributes to this problem of new players feeling the need to rush to achieve some new shiny but telling them the quickest and often most advanced way of getting it.

For example, recently a new player asked a question about engineering and it was clearly evident that he had no idea about collecting mats, especially RAW mats on the surface of a body. But instead of being told how to fit an SRV, what types of bodies, how to identify which ones are landable or even what 3rd party tools are available to find the nearest body with the mats he needs he was bombarded with advice to travel 12,000 lys to the shards. Sure that is one way to get RAW mats but the poor guy probably hadn't travelled more than a 100lys or so. But no, the experts were adamant that heading to the shards is the only real way to get the mats. So naturally when a new player asks about a way to earn credits, instead of being told how to trade, how to mine, how to explore, they are flooded with details of the latest meta on how they can earn 500m credits per hour or something. And they naturally believe it, not realising they need ships they don't have yet, rank they don't have yet, reputation they don't have yet. Then they get jaded because they 'fail' to achieve what they were just told is the 'norm'.

Basically if a new player asks a question, they are immediately given the end game route, not one that he can learn and evolve within the game with. How often have we seen here that a new player asks a question concerning combat and is told to stack massacre missions because it is the latest meta, or they have a question about exploration and directed to head to the guardian sites to get the GFSDB. I honestly don't know whether it is just misplaced good will or over-the-top bravado and boasting but it isn't helping these new players.

You get all kinds of advice on the forums. I was the first one to post about the biological sites in that thread, and that was in direct response to someone who said the only way to get raw mats was get into an SRV blah blah... My first trip out there was in a dbx with a G2 increased range drive and a ...

Personally when I read posts like that, it inspired me to learn more, to want to see more, to understand all the things this game can offer. It was a posted coriolis build that sent me off to unlock Guardian stuff. I had this G2 increased range drive on my dbx, but I wanted to take a trip into the deep dark to this place where metals grew like trees... On the way to the Guardian site, I got pulled out of hyper by this thing I hadn't ever seen. I was fairly frightened, nearly peed my pants ... Holy crap, that things is a Thargoid !?

See how that can work?

Funny about that bit about 500 million per hour, etc, the majority of folks that post those kinds of numbers are like in this thread. The ones who claim fantastic 'easy' to achieve sums. So easy and over the top that it all needs to be nerfed to 300 cr a mission again.

Yep, funny how that works .)

 

[metatheurgist]

If that would make the game more intense I'd agree, but it would just make it more tedious. Grinding money isn't the best part of Elite by a long way. And its because of people that do (like you alluded to) that it's this way to begin with.

No grind is required. You make money doing anything in this game. It just builds up, unless you're losing a corvette every day and somehow not making the rebuy. In which case you should probably switch to a cheaper ship. There's no rush to get to a big ship, this game has been around 5 years and it'll probably be around for another 5. There is nothing you can do in a big ship you can't do in a small ship in ED, except maybe faster.

 

[Morbad]

You can't unlearn what you have learned. You can't get that feeling back. Deal with it.

I never should have lost that feeling, because no level of achievement or accumulated experience should be enough to guarantee success or dispel tension. It should just increase the stakes and provide some more options.

All you are doing is sitting here wanting others games made worst, so you can attempt to get a feeling back you NEVER WILL AGAIN.

How is this fundamentally any different from wanting other's games to be made worse so you can enjoy the transient experience you're having?

But has it all really helped frontier's bottom line? How many more sales have they gotten from implementing powerplay? Engineers? I'm not sure how much profit there has been in taking this route. Maybe it has simply been a bad choice, even from a profit perspective.

If it wasn't better for their bottom line, they wouldn't be doing it. Most people are nearly passive consumers of content, and good gameplay likely doesn't sell as well as more stuff.

All the "achievement" he's craving will one day be just vapor.

The game ending does nothing to diminish any achievement of mine and I'm not sure how you could think it would.

Experiences are wholly internal; they're memories, and, in the case of games like this, do not depend on the continued existence of the character I was playing when I made them. They are still better than confabulations though...they really happened and taught real, translatable, lessons.

Nobody has been able to articulate exactly WHAT the benefit of a long drawn out credit grind would be. I'm still waiting for that answer. A real one.

Who has actually said they want a grind?

Plenty of calls for meaningul progression, or difficulty, or potential for setbacks...but I haven't seen many calls for grind.

If you want to know what the benefits are for a system where the individual player cannot unilaterally set the rate of progress for their character in a persistent, shared, setting. Well, that's easy...internal consistency.

You say the game "very much feels like a massive living world I was brought into", but I don't think you'd be saying that if you looked at it more closely. The veneer of credibility about the setting is very thin, far thinner than it need be, should be, could be, or even was.

I've been playing Dayz a lot recently, where everything is lost on death and it makes the game overall very intense. Don't think I'd like that in Elite because of engineering, but there needs to be some form of loss beyond the pittance I currently lose even in my most expensive ship.

It worked in Jumpgate, and was one of the key constraints that enforced scarcity on that game's equivalent of Engineered items.

In that game, 'precollapse artifacts' were essentially lost tech modules that could be pulled out of deep space. They were the only equipment that couldn't be manufactured like commodity parts and offered similar performance advantages as top-grade Engineered equipment does in Elite: Dangerous. A fully artied heavy fighter could outfight any two or three similar ships that weren't also geared up with artifacts, and could outrun anything except scout and ranger class vessels (and it could outfight as many of these as you'd ever likely to be able to gather).

These artifacts were uninsurable, and if you lost a ship equipped with any, you didn't get any kind of compensation. So, you had to be careful how you used them, because if you screwed up, they were gone. Rather than just build up, in an endlessly inflating treadmill, attrition kept things balanced.

Elite: Dangerous has gone out of it's way to make attrition all but impossible. Success, by most metrics, is assured...and this is boring.

The mmo format of Elite makes this a tough problem to solve.

If the game wasn't an MMO, this wouldn't be a problem. Private multi-player games can set whatever rules the host/administrator cares to. Single player games can feature whatever constraints that individual player finds appropriate.

Persistent, shared, massively multiplayer games need to have everyone on the same page to work.

I guess the problem FDev have, now, is that the need to provide content that allows players to bankroll their FCs without it becoming a full-time job.

They don't need to do this, because not everyone needs an FC. Hell, not all characters need to have their needs met.

Some things should be out of reach for some players and play styles, or some characters. Some should be allowed to fail, especially in a setting described the way Elite's is.

 

[Commander Biscuit]

No grind is required. You make money doing anything in this game. It just builds up, unless you're losing a corvette every day and somehow not making the rebuy. In which case you should probably switch to a cheaper ship. There's no rush to get to a big ship, this game has been around 5 years and it'll probably be around for another 5. There is nothing you can do in a big ship you can't do in a small ship in ED, except maybe faster.

Sure, that's my philosophy and how I play in general, but I understand FD's design choice. A small percentage of players leave their Sidewinder for a bigger ship, because they've quit the game by this point. FD understands that gameplay has to consist of more than just trying to get a better ship. It makes no sense to try and extend that period of the game beyond what it's currently at with the game's low retention rate.

If players want to draw that part of the game out, there's nothing stopping them. Plenty of low paying activities still exist to increase the time spent playing. It's probably why activities like salvage and such were never balanced, for players that prefer a slower paced game and have plenty of free time.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

When I first played this game I recall spending days shooting and trading to earn enough for a Cobra III, then if I did a few missions I could maybe earn enough to upgrade the thrusters or lasers a little bit at a time, eeking out a profit, gleaning a little money here and there to upgrade the ship and keep a little back for trading. There was a real sense of "ducking and diving" and being on a knife-edge.

NOW. Well, I've reset my save and started again because I got bored. I've got a Imperial and either I'm a much better commander, or payouts are just ludicrous. I literally get enough for a/b grade a module for every mission board mission. I earn enough for a Hauler or Adder from many single courier missions, which begs the question why the company didn't just buy a damned ship and take it there themselves! - then there's combat. I - just - assist in taking down a minor league criminal and I get rewarded with enough money to buy a new ship. 20 minutes in a Nav beacon and I "earned" a several hundred thousand. It's like Dog the bounty hunter taking down some guy who didn't pay off his $100 credit card debt, and being rewarded with a new Corvette.

I know why it's been done, but seriously.....

Totally agree. It's a challenge to try to balance the game between giving veterans something to work for and not making things insanely expensive but I too wish earnings were more plausible.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I never should have lost that feeling, because no level of achievement or accumulated experience should be enough to guarantee success or dispel tension. It should just increase the stakes and provide some more options.



How is this fundamentally any different from wanting other's games to be made worse so you can enjoy the transient experience you're having?



If it wasn't better for their bottom line, they wouldn't be doing it. Most people are nearly passive consumers of content, and good gameplay likely doesn't sell as well as more stuff.



The game ending does nothing to diminish any achievement of mine and I'm not sure how you could think it would.

Experiences are wholly internal; they're memories, and, in the case of games like this, do not depend on the continued existence of the character I was playing when I made them. They are still better than confabulations though...they really happened and taught real, translatable, lessons.



Who has actually said they want a grind?

Plenty of calls for meaningul progression, or difficulty, or potential for setbacks...but I haven't seen many calls for grind.

If you want to know what the benefits are for a system where the individual player cannot unilaterally set the rate of progress for their character in a persistent, shared, setting. Well, that's easy...internal consistency.

You say the game "very much feels like a massive living world I was brought into", but I don't think you'd be saying that if you looked at it more closely. The veneer of credibility about the setting is very thin, far thinner than it need be, should be, could be, or even was.



It worked in Jumpgate, and was one of the key constraints that enforced scarcity on that game's equivalent of Engineered items.

In that game, 'precollapse artifacts' were essentially lost tech modules that could be pulled out of deep space. They were the only equipment that couldn't be manufactured like commodity parts and offered similar performance advantages as top-grade Engineered equipment does in Elite: Dangerous. A fully artied heavy fighter could outfight any two or three similar ships that weren't also geared up with artifacts, and could outrun anything except scout and ranger class vessels (and it could outfight as many of these as you'd ever likely to be able to gather).

These artifacts were uninsurable, and if you lost a ship equipped with any, you didn't get any kind of compensation. So, you had to be careful how you used them, because if you screwed up, they were gone. Rather than just build up, in an endlessly inflating treadmill, attrition kept things balanced.

Elite: Dangerous has gone out of it's way to make attrition all but impossible. Success, by most metrics, is assured...and this is boring.



If the game wasn't an MMO, this wouldn't be a problem. Private multi-player games can set whatever rules the host/administrator cares to. Single player games can feature whatever constraints that individual player finds appropriate.

Persistent, shared, massively multiplayer games need to have everyone on the same page to work.



They don't need to do this, because not everyone needs an FC. Hell, not all characters need to have their needs met.

Some things should be out of reach for some players and play styles, or some characters. Some should be allowed to fail, especially in a setting described the way Elite's is.

I agree with most of this.
So imo the answer to making "endgame" (note
the " " as there isn't end game for ED ships more affordable isn't to inflate credit earnings this pulling the rug from 80% of content in the game is perhaps to make some of the most expensive stuff in the game a bit cheaper.

I agree with the notion of uninsurable engineered gear, these are meant to be unique. As a carrot we should have a chance to salvage some of them from our wrecks (not all) as well as have a chance of salvaging them from other wrecks.

And how to making FCs achievable without being chump chance for billionaires and forever out of reach of new players..... I would say you don't make them purchasable..... But salvageable. After a player has has played for a certain amount of time then nudge them towards crashed megaships on distant world's. We could then drop off salvage crew and have essentially our own personal repair CG which wingmates could help with to supply the needed parts.

That way it's content all players work for regardless of their bank balance however doesn't break the 4th wall like 3 million credits to scan 1 beacon risk free on a planet.

Btw if people see doing stuff in the game as grind I question whether they genuinely like the game.... . Wanting to only do 1 tiny part of the game (regardless of what it is) is fine but you should not expect FD to throw the rest of the game under the bus to allow this

 

[Fenwe]

I agree with most of this.
So imo the answer to making "endgame" (note
the " " as there isn't end game for ED ships more affordable isn't to inflate credit earnings this pulling the rug from 80% of content in the game is perhaps to make some of the most expensive stuff in the game a bit cheaper.

I agree with the notion of uninsurable engineered gear, these are meant to be unique. As a carrot we should have a chance to salvage some of them from our wrecks (not all) as well as have a chance of salvaging them from other wrecks.

And how to making FCs achievable without being chump chance for billionaires and forever out of reach of new players..... I would say you don't make them purchasable..... But salvageable. After a player has has played for a certain amount of time then nudge them towards crashed megaships on distant world's. We could then drop off salvage crew and have essentially our own personal repair CG which wingmates could help with to supply the needed parts.

That way it's content all players work for regardless of their bank balance however doesn't break the 4th wall like 3 million credits to scan 1 beacon risk free on a planet.

Btw if people see doing stuff in the game as grind I question whether they genuinely like the game.... . Wanting to only do 1 tiny part of the game (regardless of what it is) is fine but you should not expect FD to throw the rest of the game under the bus to allow this

Except then FCs aren't solo-able, they become squadron or wing things.

Heck, I don't own one. I could easily afford one, but I don't really see the point to them. That doesn't though mean that those that want them shouldn't be able to earn the $ to buy one, solo. Of course, there are other ways Fdev could have allowed them to be earned, instead of $.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

shakes head Every time I sit down I decide what I'm going to do.

Today it might be to take my Corvette into a compromized nav beacon after picking up some missions to kill pirates, or do it in my Alliance Chieftain instead.

Or use my Cutter and decide hauling supplies to Thargoid damaged stations sounds like a good idea.

Or fly my Krait MK2 to go hunt Thargoids...no I've been doing that for the last week in Wellington - anything but that...

Each ship provides a completely different available choice, or at least a very different feel of the stick when choosing to do something.

Your way just sounds boring to me. I know it gets your blood pumping and I respect that but fudge no.

I'm with Stealthie fwiw, but players like you I want to ask: why even keep credits in the game at all? Seems what you prefer is a truly open sandbox like proper sims have it.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Except then FCs aren't solo-able, they become squadron or wing things.

Heck, I don't own one. I could easily afford one, but I don't really see the point to them. That doesn't though mean that those that want them shouldn't be able to earn the $ to buy one, solo. Of course, there are other ways Fdev could have allowed them to be earned, instead of $.

Not necessarily. Note I said personal CG. It would all be about the numbers. I would suggest something plausible. Remember the point of this isn't to supply the materials to build a FC from scratch but to repair a wreck salvaging some of the existing parts. 50,000 tons of various bits of gear to fix up a ship over the course of 3-6 months or so would be perfectly doable solo for most players (don't focus on the numbers tho it's the principle I am trying to suggest. IF FD wanted to they could make it 5000 tons, it's the mechanics of it that I would prefer . Imo they shouldn't be trivial. IF that is too much for you then sure you get help but if even THAT is too much then perhaps a FC isn't for you ?

This wouldn't help those who want it NOW but imo the game needs long term goals and content.

 

[Oytis57]

It makes Elite feel like an arcade game in comparison

Well it has become exactly that,80% of the actual playerbase did not even bother to unlock Farseer but they have Billions to spare.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Not necessarily. Note I said personal CG. It would all be about the numbers. I would suggest something plausible. Remember the point of this isn't to supply the materials to build a FC from scratch but to repair a wreck salvaging some of the existing parts. 50,000 tons of various bits of gear to fix up a ship over the course of 3-6 months or so would be perfectly doable solo for most players (don't focus on the numbers tho it's the principle I am trying to suggest. IF FD wanted to they could make it 5000 tons, it's the mechanics of it that I would prefer . Imo they shouldn't be trivial. IF that is too much for you then sure you get help but if even THAT is too much then perhaps a FC isn't for you ?

This wouldn't help those who want it NOW but imo the game needs long term goals and content.

The problem with that is, unless you can get those required materials via a variety of gameplay loops, it becomes a horrible grind fest (it also reminds me of how salvaged ships work in NMS, absolutely hated that myself), and at the least a tedious set of fetch quests.

May as well stick to credits then.

 

[thelion]

"I'm being paid too much!!!"

-Said no one ever.

I"m paid too much and so is my wife.

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

Would you fine folks care to sponsor an independent pilot, old bean?

 

[Achtung-Goomba]

Can’t we just all enjoy flying pretend spaceships and be done with it?

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

The problem with that is, unless you can get those required materials via a variety of gameplay loops, it becomes a horrible grind fest (it also reminds me of how salvaged ships work in NMS, absolutely hated that myself), and at the least a tedious set of fetch quests.

May as well stick to credits then.

Guess that is just differing opinions . FD could give us multiple options to get some of the gear but sure, ultimately it would come down to supplying the materials as well as food and equipment for the workers..... To me that is a gameplay loop and I wouldn't see it as grind.myself so long as the numbers made some sort of sense.

To each their own.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Can’t we just all enjoy flying pretend spaceships and be done with it?

It depends on the sort of game you want ED to be.... Mechanically I love flying spaceships in ED. Personally I am not a fan of pure sandboxes I prefer RPG elements in there

I am having the same issue with MSFS 2020. It's beautiful and the flying mechanics are great but there are no goals,.no progression. I can go anywhere in the world but have no reason to do so.
I enjoy the experience but want more on top. I haven't tried them yet but fortunately there are 3tlrd party tools to do just what I want.

Even ETS2 has a career in it (tho it is paper thin, I expect more from ED. The old DDF for elite had a number of RPG elements with crew mate npcs with their own personalities , traits and what not (more than just a text box). I do hope that comes to ED one day. Sadly i fear if it is not in ED:O that may have hit the cutting to floor
Fundamentally some of the playerbase want ED to be a different kind of game than others.

PS CGs are a welcome addition back. Yes it's the same old grind if you want to look at it like that but I can ignore it and just see it as having a goal.

 

[BatXDude]

They rebalancing some rewards now. I think it’s the first time they have rebalanced (IIRC from their thread). Also, a gripe I have is the 32 player servers. With a galaxy this big, why only 32 players per server? It makes it incredibly challenging to find other players.

Am I being dumb and am wrong? Is it truly only 32 per server or does it move you over to different servers depending on population of the area your jumping to?

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

They rebalancing some rewards now. I think it’s the first time they have rebalanced (IIRC from their thread). Also, a gripe I have is the 32 player servers. With a galaxy this big, why only 32 players per server? It makes it incredibly challenging to find other players.

Am I being dumb and am wrong? Is it truly only 32 per server or does it move you over to different servers depending on population of the area your jumping to?

It's P2P so it is less about a server limit and more about what peer 2 peer can handle. I believe 60odd is the max number I have seen in 1 instance where as OTOH sometimes even numbers just in double figures can cause problems.
This is a limitation of the technology but it is a design decision to save money for the long term health of the game and not a bug.

It actually shows the roots of what FD expected in terms of MP in ED. It was never planned to be mass Player space battles in 1 instance and more about smaller numbera multiplayer gaming with the actual MMO part that is server based being more the BGS

Star citizen has much more ambitious plans but it's easy to be ambitious. Let's see if they can pull it off. They haven't yet AFAIK and their networking is plaguing them