ED gameplay it's all about -> logoff/logon

[Mephane]

The devs did actually add a method of balancing engineer power. The game throttles the difficulty based several factors, the 3 biggest are:

1) bounty status
2) ship DPS /type (these are 2 independant variables)
3) presence of engineer mat cargo

So they effectively make it a gauntlet to get the mods in the first place, and then they make it so that if you misuse your powers, you will face an army of extremely deadly assassins. Now of course you can go back to playing a mid tier, unmodded ship, devoid of engineering cargo, and the difficulty spikes will virtually disappear. I guess you can argue about the realism of such a throttle mechanism, I personally think it makes sense, but the effect on gameplay means that there is a comfort level of difficulty that anyone can dial in to their exact preference.

Enemy auto-scaling like this essentially means you grind the grind just so that nothing ever changes, because as soon as you get benefit X, enemies get benefit Y to compensate. For better self-balancing gameplay, a game should have geographical regions of different difficulties, so that the player can at all times choose where they go and thus what kind of opposition they may face. ED actually has the foundations for just that: security level. Enemies should never at all scale based on anything related to the player, only on 2 factors:

- What system you are in. A more sophisticated solution would also consider locations within a system, e.g. in orbits around a planet which has a pirate base = more pirate encounters.
- What missions you have active. Obviously if you have a cargo transport mission that is rated at "elite", any enemies that are spawned as part of the mission should be of corresponding difficulty.

 

[-Joe]

Combat logging and mode switching are crimes against humanity and crimes against space and time. Combat loggers be dammed, your cowardace is cringeworthy. Any rank a combat logger holds is hollow reward, an overexageration of their prowess.

Mode switching greed bedeviled mission stackers and engineer bullies are nothing but a disgrace to themselves. There is no honour in cheating. Morally Corrupt commanders may spawn excuses to justify their traitorous actions but we know they are nothing more than those that have sold their soul cheaply.

The only thing more evil than logging is chosing to play in the paralell universe solo yellow ego mode, devoid of humans and worthy opponents. Or that other lot that hang out together in I'm scared of open club.

Hopefully when the mighty Thargoids arrive they will shoot up the phoney players as a priority. Also it would blunten the terror of a Thargoid attack if the souless could somehow cheat their way out of it everytime.

 

[jasonbarron]

Combat logging and mode switching are crimes against humanity and crimes against space and time. Combat loggers be dammed, your cowardace is cringeworthy. Any rank a combat logger holds is hollow reward, an overexageration of their prowess.

Mode switching greed bedeviled mission stackers and engineer bullies are nothing but a disgrace to themselves. There is no honour in cheating. Morally Corrupt commanders may spawn excuses to justify their traitorous actions but we know they are nothing more than those that have sold their soul cheaply.

The only thing more evil than logging is chosing to play in the paralell universe solo yellow ego mode, devoid of humans and worthy opponents. Or that other lot that hang out together in I'm scared of open club.

Hopefully when the mighty Thargoids arrive they will shoot up the phoney players as a priority. Also it would blunten the terror of a Thargoid attack if the souless could somehow cheat their way out of it everytime.

Wowzers! Now why don't you tell us how you really feel and be sure to hold nothing back!

 

[Ziljan]

Enemy auto-scaling like this essentially means you grind the grind just so that nothing ever changes, because as soon as you get benefit X, enemies get benefit Y to compensate. For better self-balancing gameplay, a game should have geographical regions of different difficulties, so that the player can at all times choose where they go and thus what kind of opposition they may face. ED actually has the foundations for just that: security level. Enemies should never at all scale based on anything related to the player, only on 2 factors:

- What system you are in. A more sophisticated solution would also consider locations within a system, e.g. in orbits around a planet which has a pirate base = more pirate encounters.
- What missions you have active. Obviously if you have a cargo transport mission that is rated at "elite", any enemies that are spawned as part of the mission should be of corresponding difficulty.

The auto-scaling isn't quite linear, so no it doesn't keep a status quo that you describe. It can get more difficult before your ready to handle it, and if you over engineer certain medium and low level ships (like the Vulture), then it can get too easy. However, let me stress, the qualifiers I was describing above are a general trend, but even in 2.1 the location plays an important part depending on your actions in that system. Almost every ship you can fly can encounter plenty of variation in difficulty.

There are currently good neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods. Though the ambient difficulty in all cases is quite low if you fly a low level vanilla ship, especially a fast vanilla ship.

I haven't tested combat difficult vs location in Beta. The fact that the jumps now show the system security is a good start. Maybe they listened to player requests for the location based difficult many players were asking for? That is on my check list for beta 5.

Personally, I think it should be a combination of auto-scaling and self scaling. Big fires attract bigger bugs. Kind of like how you wouldn't take a Cobra to assassinate a Cutter right? Wouldn't an NPC only bring a ship that they knew had a chance against you?

People complained about being attacked by sidewinders, and now some people complain that NPCs come prepared for the job. We can't have it both ways.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Modular Terminals and Articulation Motors are the big 2. But there are others that can also only be found by missions. Using this this exploit increases your effectiveness by 300%. It's broken.

It's not just mats either, as TargetLost pointed out, there can be serious impacts on several competitive parts of the game where not mode switching will put you at a crippling disadvantage.

Whilst i earlier posted if it bothers you dont do it, but at the same time i do want it fixed, i must admit you make a lot of sense. Its a lot easier for me tovchoose not to docit when i do not play in open and i do not compete with others doing powerplay and the BGS flipping.
Pls excuse typing on my phone.

 

[Kalimero]

Enemy auto-scaling like this essentially means you grind the grind just so that nothing ever changes, because as soon as you get benefit X, enemies get benefit Y to compensate. For better self-balancing gameplay, a game should have geographical regions of different difficulties, so that the player can at all times choose where they go and thus what kind of opposition they may face. ED actually has the foundations for just that: security level. Enemies should never at all scale based on anything related to the player, only on 2 factors:

- What system you are in. A more sophisticated solution would also consider locations within a system, e.g. in orbits around a planet which has a pirate base = more pirate encounters.
- What missions you have active. Obviously if you have a cargo transport mission that is rated at "elite", any enemies that are spawned as part of the mission should be of corresponding difficulty.

I definitely think this is true.
In my opinion FD's balancing tends to feel rather tame, because of this very reason.
Balancing is a demanding beast and good, dynamic balancing that allows for obvious advantages and diadvantages, while still being fair is a very thin line to walk on, but there is room for improvement in that regard.

 

[Soulkiller]

I have loosely read through the thread, including Brett's post. I have to agree that this design is flawed, and people will do it as long it is permitted by the game. Of course I am going to stack 20 massacre missions to earn a bucketload of money instead of "playing the game as intended doing 1 massacre mission (or whatever amount you can get) at a time which is just totally silly.
I will not start a 108 kill massacre mission solely if that is the only mission I get. I will stack another 19 beside it to maximize my time, effort and gain.
I think it is safe to say that the majority of players arent hard core RPG players who would just take that 1 massacre mission and not refresh the board to gain even more.
If fdev cannot see this flaw I am disappointed, especially since there has been a great suggestion to fix the issue: simply generate at least 20 times more missions and get rid of the logoff/logon "feature".
I hope this will be sorted out soon.
PS: The game is amazing, I even love the engineers and Im totally happy with them!

 

[Tataboj]

Soulkiller: I'm sure it's not as simple a solution as you think.

 

[Infidel Deity]

Elite is a game that takes a special kind of person to play.

I guess it takes a special kind of person to write such rubbish. [yesnod]

 

[Tataboj]

Enemy auto-scaling like this essentially means you grind the grind just so that nothing ever changes, because as soon as you get benefit X, enemies get benefit Y to compensate. For better self-balancing gameplay, a game should have geographical regions of different difficulties, so that the player can at all times choose where they go and thus what kind of opposition they may face. ED actually has the foundations for just that: security level. Enemies should never at all scale based on anything related to the player, only on 2 factors:

- What system you are in. A more sophisticated solution would also consider locations within a system, e.g. in orbits around a planet which has a pirate base = more pirate encounters.
- What missions you have active. Obviously if you have a cargo transport mission that is rated at "elite", any enemies that are spawned as part of the mission should be of corresponding difficulty.

I think this already happens. When I have a low rank cargo mission, I usually get mostly harmless pilots if they're sent after me.

 

[Karlos Ploryman]

Combat logging and mode switching are crimes against humanity and crimes against space and time. Combat loggers be dammed, your cowardace is cringeworthy. Any rank a combat logger holds is hollow reward, an overexageration of their prowess.

Mode switching greed bedeviled mission stackers and engineer bullies are nothing but a disgrace to themselves. There is no honour in cheating. Morally Corrupt commanders may spawn excuses to justify their traitorous actions but we know they are nothing more than those that have sold their soul cheaply.

The only thing more evil than logging is chosing to play in the paralell universe solo yellow ego mode, devoid of humans and worthy opponents. Or that other lot that hang out together in I'm scared of open club.

Hopefully when the mighty Thargoids arrive they will shoot up the phoney players as a priority. Also it would blunten the terror of a Thargoid attack if the souless could somehow cheat their way out of it everytime.

Damn! I must clean my monitor, because i sprayed it with coffee as i laughed !

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

Since I've seen it a few times in the last few days I have to ask. Why is yellow used as an insult? What does it mean? Where does that use come from?

(It's a real question. English isn't my native language and idioms are really hard to understand and decipher).

 

[Mephane]

There are currently good neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods. Though the ambient difficulty in all cases is quite low if you fly a low level vanilla ship, especially a fast vanilla ship.

I've not experienced and noticable difference between location. You can fly for half a minute in supercruise in a high security and get interdicted by an elite-rated Vulture, or you can fly for half an hour in circles in an anarchy system under control by a criminal gang until eventually a competent-rated Cobra interdicts you. If there is an effect based on location, it is entirely drowned in the randomness of the spawn mechanisms.

Personally, I think it should be a combination of auto-scaling and self scaling. Big fires attract bigger bugs. Kind of like how you wouldn't take a Cobra to assassinate a Cutter right? Wouldn't an NPC only bring a ship that they knew had a chance against you?

People complained about being attacked by sidewinders, and now some people complain that NPCs come prepared for the job. We can't have it both ways.

Oh I get what you are saying. What I mean is what actually spawns in the game should absolutely not at all auto-scale. An elite FDL shouldn't spawn because you are elite and flying an FAS. The elite FDL should spawn when and where it makes sense due to the system type, security level, BGS etc. Then whether that elite FDL decides to interdict you would depend on what your rank is, what you are flying etc.

Essentially, the ships you see should (statistically) be the same for every player in the same place at the same point in time, regardless of their individual rank, ship type, whether they have cargo loaded etc. Only NPC behaviour should then be influenced by these attributes.

(Plus, a lot would be achieved if NPCs stopped magically spawning out of nowhere right behind you, teleporting halfway across system, and reappearing out of nowhere after having been killed just seconds ago.)

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I think this already happens. When I have a low rank cargo mission, I usually get mostly harmless pilots if they're sent after me.

That's only for the mission-spawned NPCs. But NPCs created from the system regardless of any missions (which can happen in addition to mission NPCs) do just scale off the player.

 

[drzdeano]

Since I've seen it a few times in the last few days I have to ask. Why is yellow used as an insult? What does it mean? Where does that use come from?

(It's a real question. English isn't my native language and idioms are really hard to understand and decipher).

I guess you havnt seen back to the future.. Was it the second one?

Yellow = coward.

Ar least I think that's what your talking about

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

I guess you havnt seen back to the future.. Was it the second one?

Yellow = coward.

Ar least I think that's what your talking about

Ah, interesting. Now I'm wondering why yellow=coward. I've seen the "Back to the future" movies, but in German. Like most movies, as a result I don't understand a lot of language based pop cultural references.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[drzdeano]

He calls Marty mcfly a yellow bellied coward.

As for why yellow is an insult.... Well damn you got me

 

[fennster]

Ah, interesting. Now I'm wondering why yellow=coward. I've seen the "Back to the future" movies, but in German. Like most movies, as a result I don't understand a lot of language based pop cultural references.

Thanks for the reply.

It's from yellow belly, that one I have heard of as it's common but not generally used in the UK.

Internet says it origins come from a derogatory term for people who came from the lincolnshire fens, like their eels which also have yellow bellies. (Not sure if an eel is considered a intrinsically cowardly creature?).

Other uses are from the American military to use against Mexicans, possibly for the colour of their skin or possibly their yellow uniforms.

Either way it seems to be bound in some form of xenophobia.

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

It's from yellow belly, that one I have heard of as it's common but not generally used in the UK.

Internet says it origins come from a derogatory term for people who came from the lincolnshire fens, like their eels which also have yellow bellies. (Not sure if an eel is considered a intrinsically cowardly creature?).

Other uses are from the American military to use against Mexicans, possibly for the colour of their skin or possibly their yellow uniforms.

Either way it seems to be bound in some form of xenophobia.

Thanks for the explanation. There is always something to learn

 

[[VR] Marrs]

The number of missions normally presented is 'considered' enough by the game developers. That is what the decided in order to set the rate of progression. Players who mode switch decided to operate outside the framework of the game as intended. If the option to do so was not there, it would not happen and the game would be played as intended by all. Nobody would have an unfair advantage in playing the BGS. As far as I am concerned, the best fix is to find a way to prevent it from being done at all.

I agree completely. There may be technical reasons why it would be difficult to implement but ideally the game simply wouldn't let this be a thing.

 

[Fishy]

The trouble with closing down exploits/features (pick the one that suits whichever side of the fence you're on) is that if you don't also remove the profits made through using them, you're enshrining a split in the player base, with part of it having enjoyed an easy ride to whichever progress the removed exploit/feature (here, pick the other word and post an angry reply).

The old Robigo made plenty of people rich, old donations had plenty of people rank up fed/imp navy cheap and fast, mode switching contributes to both money and navy ranking. The first two were removed, the third one lives for now. But in the first two cases, everyone that enjoyed them got to keep their cash and their ranks, effectively no longer being affected by the closing down of exploits/features, yet still weighting on how new players should go about achieving the same milestones, generally by putting in more effort.

Personally, I've made my money and abused board refresh enough to be within a last rank of the Fed Corvette (for funky screenshots mainly, I don't like the Conda and it seems more of the same), so the closing down of any get-rich-quick (skimmer missions+ board refreshing + reinstancing) and rank-up-fast (board switching) schemes won't affect me. But it feels a bit unfair that everyone coming after will be looking at the massive wall that is navy ranking with only the (massively overtuned past rank 8-9 imho) single mission board way to go around it.

If closing down these exploits/features is really for the better enjoyment of everyone, then there shouldn't be any downside to closing them all down and reset everyone's progress. We'll all be facing the same enjoyable slow progression with no rush and will enjoy the game more for it.