Does Elite Need a Market Reform?

[ubermick]

They are getting slower. They used to be pretty quick, and fairly decisive, in their fixes. Rember that first 4 billion credit bug? Or the Shinrarta module exploit? Those did not last long, and they stripped the offending assets from accounts. It feels like they mostly just stopped caring after early-mid 2015.

There's a fuzzy line between an exploit and a gold rush. The LTD rush wasn't an exploit (nor was Smeaton) so they let them go for a while. It wasn't until people started relogging at the egg with the SLF that it crossed the line into exploit, at which point the hammer came down within a week. But I think so many people were in that system at the time, and so much money bled out of it into the player economy that finding where the money from "gold rush" ended and "exploit" began was nigh on impossible.

 

[Darth Ender]

Ok, so i'm not saying this is perfect, but, take for example collecting raw materials.

Idiots who follow youtube guides made by clickbate youtubers belive the best way to get a particular raw material is to find as geological site and farm it and relog. While that might produce a slightly higher rate of farming materials, there is another option, and that is actually driving around a planet, following the wave scanner, and farming materials from rocks, and, if you need a certain material, trade for it with all the other stuff you gained while driving around.

Let's compare the gameplay.

1) Sit at a single site, harvest a few locations, relog.

2) Drive around, follow wave scanner, handle the terrain, while periodically shooting rocks and gathering materials.

Each person can choose their own route to gathering materials. There is the grind, as advocated by youtubers looking for easy clicks, or actually play the game, have fun, and earn stuff while you are at it.

Want manufactured materials? Yes, you can do the youtube relog at Dav's hope or wherever.... OR you can go into a RES or CZ, do some combat, and when you have taken out an opponent, launch your collectors to grab the stuff that has been dropped, and in a CZ, there is a ton of Grade 4-5 stuff that can be traded for good value.

In short, ignore the youtubers who tell you how to grind, and then complain about the grind. Learn how to get stuff while actually enjoying the game, without relogging, without grinding.

I'm not saying its perfect. I am saying its a lot better than some people would paint it.

You've not described avoiding the grind, you've just described 1 thing (materials) where the time you spend playing and grinding isn't entirely wasted due to the market setup around it, so you dont need to do the exact same thing over and over for exactly the same reward - which can become very boring or introduce a lot of dead time. You can just do the exact same thing over and over for any reward.

That's different from commodities and other gameplay where the market setup to balance (reward) your time spent is credits. Like space trucking or mining.

Materials are the currency in the example provided and that currency of different values can be converted ...and the currency of lesser value has purpose directly itself. It's all valuable. Credits do not have that same luxury. When your time is converted to credits, the only thing that has any value is the highest reward for the least amount of time.

IE. it makes no sense to mine all of the rocks in a roid field... because most rocks are only going to give you worthless garbage ...but the time spent getting it is exactly the same as the time spent getting much more valuable rocks in that roid field. You cut out the dead time between finding those valuable rocks (hopefully) by doing stupid stuff like mapping roid fields out-of-game and following youtube videos. Or you just suffer the dead time, because even if you do, you still end up making more credits than if you filled up on garbage rocks instead for the same time spent.


The commodity market has always been a joke in the game and so anything based on it has garbage balance for gameplay. Since the bgs and nothing in the game really depends on what's being produced or mined in the market, there is no value to almost anything in the commodity board except the most valuable items in the part of the game where they're available (trade only, minable only, etc) ....other than a couple that engineers require.

The only way for what you suggest to be valid for at least miners and traders is if the economy in elite stops being entirely fake and starts actually depending on all of the items involved. Then even if there's no direct credit reward worthwhile for something, that item may be valuable in other ways such as allowing the station to offer other services / modules / ships ...or the faction having a limited presence or overwhelming one..etc that impacts the bgs.

Because one thing is still true, these would all still be grind loops... what you do and what it requires of you is the same whether it's trading a high value item vs a low value item, mining a high value item vs mining a low value item. There's no difference in effort by the player on getting a low value item vs a high. What you would need to do is convert commodities into a market similar to materials that the bgs and players utilize - in other words, an actual game economy ...and not the placeholder we've been given.

 

[ubermick]

Was Down to Earth Exploits one of them?

One of them, although I've honestly stopped watching all of them. Down to Earth at least used to have some stuff focusing on content rather than exclusively on "how to" guides, but last I saw he was one of the lads that came out of some sort of "content creator roundtable" suddenly a SC ardent and constantly pushing his referral code. I tuned out after that.

 

[lefty1117]

Make engineering grind a bit easier, but add permanent item decay so that ultimately the item will have to be replaced. One of the best things in SWG economy/crafting IMO, which I still consider to be the best. Will make for a great credit sink among the very active players ... think of it as a consumption tax

 

[Agony_Aunt]

You've not described avoiding the grind, you've just described 1 thing (materials) where the time you spend playing and grinding isn't entirely wasted due to the market setup around it, so you dont need to do the exact same thing over and over for exactly the same reward - which can become very boring or introduce a lot of dead time. You can just do the exact same thing over and over for any reward.

That's different from commodities and other gameplay where the market setup to balance (reward) your time spent is credits. Like space trucking or most combat.

Materials are the currency in the example provided and that currency of different values can be converted ...and the currency of lesser value has purpose directly itself. It's all valuable. Credits do not have that same luxury. When your time is converted to credits, the only thing that has any value is the highest reward for the least amount of time.

IE. it makes no sense to mine all of the rocks in a roid field... because most rocks are only going to give you worthless garbage ...but the time spent getting it is exactly the same as the time spent getting much more valuable rocks in that roid field. You cut out the dead time between finding those valuable rocks (hopefully) by doing stupid stuff like mapping roid fields out-of-game and following youtube videos. Or you just suffer the dead time, because even if you do, you still end up making more credits than if you filled up on garbage rocks instead for the same time spent.


The commodity market has always been a joke in the game and so anything based on it has garbage balance for gameplay. Since the bgs and nothing in the game really depends on what's being produced or mined in the market, there is no value to almost anything in the commodity board except the most valuable items in the part of the game where they're available (trade only, minable only, etc) ....other than a couple that engineers require.

The only way for what you suggest to be valid for at least miners and traders is if the economy in elite stops being entirely fake and starts actually depending on all of the items involved. Then even if there's no direct credit reward worthwhile for something, that item may be valuable in other ways such as allowing the station to offer other services / modules / ships ...or the faction having a limited presence or overwhelming one..etc that impacts the bgs.

Because one thing is still true, these would all still be grind loops... what you do and what it requires of you is the same whether it's trading a high value item vs a low value item, mining a high value item vs mining a low value item. There's no difference in effort by the player on getting a low value item vs a high. What you would need to do is convert commodities into a market similar to materials that the bgs and players utilize - in other words, an actual game economy ...and not the placeholder we've been given.

There are many different activities that can be described as grind. I was referencing one type of activity that is viewed as a grind.

We can discuss others.

 

[ubermick]

Don't mind me...

 

[Felix DiCestria]

It could be worse, at least it isn't as broken as the economy in NMS.

 

[Darth Ender]

There are many different activities that can be described as grind. I was referencing one type of activity that is viewed as a grind.

We can discuss others.

i define it as a nearly skill-less activity available to players of a game at basically all ranks that can be completed repeatedly. It has nothing to do with whether it's boring or fun since such things are subjective. grind isn't about being in the eye of the beholder, it's a distinct, definable thing.

Generally, such things are available in games for new players to get started in, but they exist always, so even experienced players can lazily participate. The reward is generally very low because the effort required to complete the loop is very low.

Usually, games that include such loops have higher level game loops built on top that allow players to progress faster, at the cost of being more difficult with potentially different risks associated. That means that grind being boring or too easy or monotonous isn't an issue generally. It's supposed to be for people who have exceeded it's target audience. There are usually better alternatives you can participate in to avoid those grind loops.


In elite, we have missions as our only real option. But the missions for mining and trading just have you doing exactly the same thing you'd do in the grind loop, sometimes for more credits, sometimes less ...sometimes with other rewards. The activity however, is exactly the same, so they dont serve the purpose of being a layer on top of grind loops.

and obviously, exploration is also a grind loop, though i hesitate to call exploration an actual role in the game considering how little anything you do exploring actually matters ...it's even less than the fake economy built around making commodities matter. At least those different things have missions that have you hunt for them. There are no missions looking for data on certain things find exploring.

 

[Morbad]

The latest one was youtubers telling people to hammer anarchy settlements for Odyssey mats, and then a month later telling people that anarchy systems are disappearing and Frontier need to do something about it.

Even if it was the same channel saying both things, there isn't necessarily a contradiction here. Something can be the most advantageous thing to do in game while the game's reaction to it can still be absurd and broadly harmful. ED is a game where our CMDRs are regularly incentivized to do the absurd and the annoying.

There's a fuzzy line between an exploit and a gold rush. The LTD rush wasn't an exploit (nor was Smeaton) so they let them go for a while. It wasn't until people started relogging at the egg with the SLF that it crossed the line into exploit, at which point the hammer came down within a week. But I think so many people were in that system at the time, and so much money bled out of it into the player economy that finding where the money from "gold rush" ended and "exploit" began was nigh on impossible.

The game doesn't react plausibly to 'gold rushes' either, which is part of what makes it hard to distinguish intended behavior from bugs, and makes their effects more problematic. The game barely even pretends to act like a thermodynamic system, and any system that blatantly violates the laws of thermodynamics is going to see surreal.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

i define it as a nearly skill-less activity available to players of a game at basically all ranks that can be completed repeatedly. It has nothing to do with whether it's boring or fun since such things are subjective. grind isn't about being in the eye of the beholder, it's a distinct, definable thing.

Generally, such things are available in games for new players to get started in, but they exist always, so even experienced players can lazily participate. The reward is generally very low because the effort required to complete the loop is very low.

Usually, games that include such loops have higher level game loops built on top that allow players to progress faster, at the cost of being more difficult with potentially different risks associated. That means that grind being boring or too easy or monotonous isn't an issue generally. It's supposed to be for people who have exceeded it's target audience. There are usually better alternatives you can participate in to avoid those grind loops.


In elite, we have missions as our only real option. But the missions for mining and trading just have you doing exactly the same thing you'd do in the grind loop, sometimes for more credits, sometimes less ...sometimes with other rewards. The activity however, is exactly the same, so they dont serve the purpose of being a layer on top of grind loops.

and obviously, exploration is also a grind loop, though i hesitate to call exploration an actual role in the game considering how little anything you do exploring actually matters ...it's even less than the fake economy built around making commodities matter. At least those different things have missions that have you hunt for them. There are no missions looking for data on certain things find exploring.

Sorry, which activity are you talking about? That's a lot of words without actually talking about what you are talking about.

 

[ubermick]

Even if it was the same channel saying both things, there isn't necessarily a contradiction here. Something can be the most advantageous thing to do in game while the game's reaction to it can still be absurd and broadly harmful. ED is a game where our CMDRs are regularly incentivized to do the absurd and the annoying.

Just to be clear, a Youtuber saying "Hey fans, hammer this settlement and just relog to stock up on your materials, its anarchy so consequence free hahaha, tell your friends and don't forget to like, subscribe, and support me on patreon!" and then a couple of months later following it up with "Hey fans, this anarchy faction has tanked in the last couple of months because people have been hammering it for materials, its all someone else's fault and they need to fix it, tell your friends and don't forget to like, subscribe, and support me on patreon!" isn't a contradiction?

 

[Bottom Hat]

Dear thread

Thank you for looking after Ender this evening. Your help is appreciated.

 

[ubermick]

But he is right, sadly. Nothing actually matters in ED.

Well, I mean it is just a computer game at the end of the day?

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Sorry, too late.

Remember when they changed how engineering worked?

Ideally they would have done it then, but they knew the fallout that would happen if they did reign it in. They can't reduce the power creep, they can only increase it.

If you were a dev, would you risk the influx of negative Steam reviews for reducing the power creep, rather than taking the safe route of increasing it?

Yeah I remember it well. It turned a really awful, 100% RNG system into a less awful and more predictable one. Doesn't win any innovation awards but yes that's around the time I actually got into engineering - didn't touch the initial version with a barge pole (so no OP legacy mods for me).

As for your question, this is an excellent answer really...

I doubt it would be any worse than releasing a DLC about a year too early and stating that you were deprecating existing features that set the game apart like VR.

They already went nukular on the game, and we're still here

I'm only musing really ... I know full well Frontier won't/can't do it.

Can that statement not be applied to... well, more or less everything though?

Why do people want fully A-rated G5 Cutters when all they're doing is tootling about?
Why do people want every engineer unlocked when chances are they won't actually use them all?
Why do people rank all the way up to King/Admiral, when there's not much point to it after the Cutter/Corvette is unlocked?

I mean, for the record I completely agree with you about the credit hoarding... and indeed the above. There's nothing WRONG with wanting a massive in-game bank balance, or wanting the best of the best ships, but people seem to do it because rather than just playing the game and enjoying it, youtubers are feeding them nonsense that if they're not earning/progressing at an exponential rate, they're not doing it properly.

Of course, and I don't begrudge them for doing it (that'd be silly), I just don't see the appeal given the work and effort that needs to go into amassing such wealth in the game, for no real benefit other than ... well, feeling "rich" perhaps, is that it? You already are rich when having 10bn to your CMDR name, I don't see where another zero at the end makes any difference ... and unlike your examples above it won't make the game play out ever so slightly differently either, it's just a number in the UI... tbh it's one of the reasons why I wiped, "having it all" started to really bore me in the game and I ended up not knowing what to do other than going through the motions of rotating activities. Though I'm a player who requires a goal, a focus, and obtaining assets is as good as any really in that respect.

Wiping your account is a terrible solution, lol. I don't want to re-do the same things over again, I want to do NEW things. Grinding credits for my fleet carrier was FUN. Give me more of that!

But grinding is the essence of doing the same thing all over again, so it'd be right up your alley You could grind credits in different ways, say by only doing on-foot missions.... that'd keep you busy for a while!

As far as colonization is concerned, it NEEDS to be a huge endeavor. If you're not already heading towards that price range, you probably haven't even bought every ship in the game yet. I could have hundreds of billions of credits by now if I had any incentive to do so, but I just stopped because I ran out of stuff to buy!

The last thing you want is thousands of abandoned settlements clogging up space at the edge of the bubble.

My point was, you have to remember that you (and me) are not your average Elite player. Why would Frontier develop content and make it so difficult to experience by locking it behind a crazy credit wall which will mean the vast majority of their players - customers - will never experience that content? It'll be the same as for FCs, just worse - people try to grind towards it because they want to play it, and burn out eventually and then complain here and/or via Steam reviews how grindy the game is. It might work for you perhaps, but not for almost everyone else.

 

[ubermick]

Of course, and I don't begrudge them for doing it (that'd be silly), I just don't see the appeal given the work and effort that needs to go into amassing such wealth in the game, for no real benefit other than ... well, feeling "rich" perhaps, is that it? You already are rich when having 10bn to your CMDR name, I don't see where another zero at the end makes any difference ... and unlike your examples above it won't make the game play out ever so slightly differently either, it's just a number in the UI... tbh it's one of the reasons why I wiped, "having it all" started to really bore me in the game and I ended up not knowing what to do other than going through the motions of rotating activities. Though I'm a player who requires a goal, a focus, and obtaining assets is as good as any really in that respect.

In many ways, the ease at which credits are obtained makes the game less enjoyable. I have enough in the bank to never worry about earning money again, purely down to how easy its become. Rebuys are absolutely trivial now, even the 30m on my Corvette. Gone are the days when I was doing data missions from Robigo where a scan caused everything to fail, and I was boosting through mail slots in a barely upgraded and completely unengineered AspX, terrified knowing that cocking up would be crippling since the rebuy was about half of everything I had.

Fast forward to now, I went down to Robigo last week to earn some Modified Embedded Firmware to engineer some multicannons, and I made 40m or so as a bonus in the process, not even TRYING to earn money. I mean, FDev just GAVE AWAY 150m in credits over the holidays, plus two nice ships!! What I wouldn't have given for THAT to have happened in 2015!!

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Ok, so i'm not saying this is perfect, but, take for example collecting raw materials.

Idiots who follow youtube guides made by clickbate youtubers belive the best way to get a particular raw material is to find as geological site and farm it and relog. While that might produce a slightly higher rate of farming materials, there is another option, and that is actually driving around a planet, following the wave scanner, and farming materials from rocks, and, if you need a certain material, trade for it with all the other stuff you gained while driving around.

Let's compare the gameplay.

1) Sit at a single site, harvest a few locations, relog.

2) Drive around, follow wave scanner, handle the terrain, while periodically shooting rocks and gathering materials.

Each person can choose their own route to gathering materials. There is the grind, as advocated by youtubers looking for easy clicks, or actually play the game, have fun, and earn stuff while you are at it.

Want manufactured materials? Yes, you can do the youtube relog at Dav's hope or wherever.... OR you can go into a RES or CZ, do some combat, and when you have taken out an opponent, launch your collectors to grab the stuff that has been dropped, and in a CZ, there is a ton of Grade 4-5 stuff that can be traded for good value.

In short, ignore the youtubers who tell you how to grind, and then complain about the grind. Learn how to get stuff while actually enjoying the game, without relogging, without grinding.

I'm not saying its perfect. I am saying its a lot better than some people would paint it.

Yes, the buggy is actually good and the scanner stuff a good idea. I did that a lot just for the fun - because you couldn't actually do anything with the stuff. When we could actually do something with the stuff it zurned out I still could do anything with it because there was just too much different stuff and most of the rare stuff didnt drop properly or stuff that was meant to be common was in a wrong drop table. Not to mention all the stuff I might have used but went into the bin because despite setting up a gros of ingredients we had just a laughable inventory to store it. Oh and some of the stuff we didn't have inventory at all because it was commodities. Beats me who thought this was actually a good thing.

And I didnt even start about the layered RNG. It took them two years to fix that mess up.

Beats me too how you think doing CZ is a good way to gather mats. AI always went full lemming on the player and with the bullet sponge on top?

 

[Deleted member 182079]

In many ways, the ease at which credits are obtained makes the game less enjoyable. I have enough in the bank to never worry about earning money again, purely down to how easy its become. Rebuys are absolutely trivial now, even the 30m on my Corvette. Gone are the days when I was doing data missions from Robigo where a scan caused everything to fail, and I was boosting through mail slots in a barely upgraded and completely unengineered AspX, terrified knowing that cocking up would be crippling since the rebuy was about half of everything I had.

Fast forward to now, I went down to Robigo last week to earn some Modified Embedded Firmware to engineer some multicannons, and I made 40m or so as a bonus in the process, not even TRYING to earn money. I mean, FDev just GAVE AWAY 150m in credits over the holidays, plus two nice ships!! What I wouldn't have given for THAT to have happened in 2015!!

It's very uneven for most of the "legacy" content, that is Horizons ships and modules. Exception being Fleet Carriers, those are pretty out of reach without some serious grinding, or alternatively playing the game casually yet on a full-time basis for months if not years.

But yeah, I was in two minds about those credit giveaways - personally I found them useful in my quest to get my FC back, however for a complete beginner who happened to engage in CG/story/Xmas content for the first time, the reward would've been completely over the top. Those 150m are basically a free Anaconda (if only E-rated) - something we used to meme about as something so outrageous they'd only give them away at Hutton Orbital. How times have changed...

 

[DemiserofD]

But grinding is the essence of doing the same thing all over again, so it'd be right up your alley You could grind credits in different ways, say by only doing on-foot missions.... that'd keep you busy for a while!
My point was, you have to remember that you (and me) are not your average Elite player. Why would Frontier develop content and make it so difficult to experience by locking it behind a crazy credit wall which will mean the vast majority of their players - customers - will never experience that content? It'll be the same as for FCs, just worse - people try to grind towards it because they want to play it, and burn out eventually and then complain here and/or via Steam reviews how grindy the game is. It might work for you perhaps, but not for almost everyone else.

I would argue that the context of why you're doing something is just as important, if not moreso, than what you're doing.

I agree this isn't a case where they should invest a huge amount of assets, but if done properly, it really shouldn't take THAT much in the way of resources. You use the same generation techniques they used for randomly generated systems. Just set the cost way up there.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Want manufactured materials? Yes, you can do the youtube relog at Dav's hope or wherever.... OR you can go into a RES or CZ, do some combat, and when you have taken out an opponent, launch your collectors to grab the stuff that has been dropped, and in a CZ, there is a ton of Grade 4-5 stuff that can be traded for good value.

In fairness, I ended up doing a few laps around Dav's Hope for both my alt account previously but also my main shortly after the wipe - what it does well is provide a mix of both manufactured and data mats that are useful for the most basic mods (for Raw you can indeed just drive around in the SRV, or go laser mining).

I'd say a lot of long-term players who pull their noses up at this particular mat cheesing method have forgotten how painful it is to get anything done in the game very early on when you're stuck with stock, perhaps not even A-rated gear like FSDs etc., no engineers unlocked, no stockpiles of mats at hand, especially if you're not aware (yet) of 3rd party tools that will locate A-rated gear easier. I tried initially to gather mats organically but it's a very slow process and not everyone has the patience required.

I'd still recommend it to noobs who are frustrated with the slow pace of engineering at the very beginning, it provides a decent leg up to get going.

 

[ubermick]

It's very uneven for most of the "legacy" content, that is Horizons ships and modules. Exception being Fleet Carriers, those are pretty out of reach without some serious grinding, or alternatively playing the game casually yet on a full-time basis for months if not years.

But yeah, I was in two minds about those credit giveaways - personally I found them useful in my quest to get my FC back, however for a complete beginner who happened to engage in CG/story/Xmas content for the first time, the reward would've been completely over the top. Those 150m are basically a free Anaconda (if only E-rated) - something we used to meme about as something so outrageous they'd only give them away at Hutton Orbital. How times have changed...

Yep, an instant leg up. At risk of us starting an "all this was fields and we had to walk uphill barefoot in the snow" club with it, it would take a month of playing to get 150m credits when we started, and its not like the cost of things has gone up - an Anaconda or Cobra or whatever costs the same today in-game as it did in 2014. I mean, 150 will get you a fully A-rated AspX as well as a fully A-rated Cobra, and still have 100m in the bank to start trading with. Or nicely kit out a T9 for laser mining. Or deck the everloving out of that free (!) Vulture that also came along with it, and cause mayhem bounty hunting.

Agree with the legacy pricing too - baffles me that a G3 Odyssey suit with a single engineering mod attached costs more than a Federal Dropship. Or even a basic single G1 gun with absolutely no modifications costs more than an Impy Eagle. It seems that Odyssey content is priced according to the "new" economy, whereas the ships are still the equivalent of buying a Ford Fiesta.