Elite Dangerous Exobiology Rank Threshold Rebalance Information

[EdzUp]

I think what Sally meant is because of the value of the data has increased the rank progression has been spaced out more to accomodate it, by this definition we would still need to hand in x amount to get to Elite its just we will earn more money from it (so the progression along will now appear more "normal" instead of Harmless to Elite V in one sale

 

[John Stoutbeard]

Fdev, you may want to consider a bit different strategy for future decision like this.
I'm not concerned about my own progress, Exo-Bio is not my thing.

But - please don't retroactively punish players in the future. It causes frustration.
Especially when mistakes was made by the team and not the players.

I can understand that you are concerned about 'incorrect / abuse of progress', but this is such a small problem in the bigger picture of what the community & the players feel about this.
The outcome is that they feel this is a punishment, their progress is hampered. Their 'virtual existence' of a commander is affected, because of such a 'tiny issue'.

o7

 

[aRJay]

As far as I'm aware, the first scan bonus is still bugged, but nobody is talking about it / acknowledging it? Why is that?

Possibly because it isn’t relevant to the rank restructuring.

 

[MattG]

Greetings Commanders.

To update futher on yesterday's acknowledgement of concerns over the recent changes brought to Exobiology rank progression:

Following the deployment of Update 14.01 there have been reports of Exobiologists having their rank progress prior to the release reverting to 0%.
​

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Developer Note:
In 14.01 we altered the thresholds for each rank along the Exobiology progression scale.

Effectively, we've moved the markers along the progression scale that denote where the start and end points of each rank are, in order to bring more harmony between the increase made to biological payouts vs how they were then affecting original rank progression.

Now that these thresholds have moved upwards to match the new payouts, your current rank may be above what you would have earned with the new thresholds.

• This means that the UI will display your rank as being 0% through your current rank.

If you are seeing your rank sat at 0%, this means that your progression behind the scenes is still catching up to the new thresholds.

• This will remain the case until you've made enough hand-ins to catch up with the new start point for your current rank.

Please rest assured that earning progression itself hasn't changed, but we'd like to apologise that the visual side of things is a little confusing whilst everything catches up.

---

I really hope this adds some clarity to the current situation for those of you seeing some unexpected behaviour with your Exobiology rank progress.

As always, thank you for sharing your thoughts and being so patient with us whilst we dig deeper into clarity for you.

o7

It makes sense that this applies to data sold after U14 but before the rank requirement was adjusted. But it's a bit of a slap in the face to anyone who put the effort in before the rank requirements changed. I don't think it was like this historically when other rank requirements were changed.

I don't know what the new rank requirements are but they've obviously been changed by a factor of X. Is it not possible to look at what CMDRs attainment was in exo just before U14 dropped and also increase that by a factor of X ?

At it's most extreme, someone at Elite IV and 1 credit away from Elite V before U14 will now effectively probably not even be at Elite in the new system, and more and less has to do everything again to get that last attainment to Elite V. Yes, it will say Elite IV - but behind the scenes they're not because their credits were earned pre-U14, and barely register on the new scale and they'll be showing 0% for ages to come

(This is still better than not changing the rank requirements, but I think it'll annoy a lot of people who worked on Exo pre-U14)

 

[Coehoorn]

bit of a slap in the face

Players abusing an unbalanced part of the game are annoyed at having spent time abusing an unbalanced part of the game? Wow.

 

[MattG]

Players abusing an unbalanced part of the game are annoyed at having spent time abusing an unbalanced part of the game? Wow.

I'm talking about people who worked on Exo before U14 dropped, I thought I made that clear. If you think that was unbalanced then you sir are crazy

I'm completely OK with this change affecting those who sold post U-14 but pre U14.01, that 100% makes sense.

 

[aRJay]

Players abusing an unbalanced part of the game are annoyed at having spent time abusing an unbalanced part of the game? Wow.

I am not sure what he wrote is the same as what you thought you read.

 

[Northpin]

Exobiology payouts are still the same and still the most profitable way of earning credits. You'll soon get those rank gains..

This is correct
But it is not the entire picture

• So, with 430 millions credits i was 97% towards elite rank (let's go with my initial example)
• ranks get increased 20x (just saying) to keep them inline with the payout increases
• now i still have 430 millions payout, but this only corresponds to about 50% between Collector and Cataloguer
• so, even while on display i still have my Geneticist rank, i have to get the required points to make ir back up to Geneticist (at the same 20x increase), that is 4.4 billions
• then to recover the 97% progress loss, i will have to get another 4+ billions to get back to 97%

note:
the rank requirement numbers are taken from the wiki, then multiplied by 20x (an arbitrary multiplier - i have no idea how high they increased the ranking requirements, but the payouts were increased by about 20 times)
collector: 12,600,000 credits (x20 = 252 millions)
cataloguer: 32 millions (x20 = 640 millions)
...
geneticist: 216 millions (x20= 4.3 billions)
elite: 440 millions (x20 = 8.8 billions)

 

[Coehoorn]

I'm talking about people who worked on Exo before U14 dropped, I thought I made that clear. If you think that was unbalanced then you sir are crazy

I'm completely OK with this change affecting those who sold post U-14 but pre U14.01, that 100% makes sense.

I see, didn't think about the old veterans being affected in their progress. I guess whoever already reached Eli5 is safe.

 

[Jabo Zerstorer]

Fdev, you may want to consider a bit different strategy for future decision like this.
I'm not concerned about my own progress, Exo-Bio is not my thing.

But - please don't retroactively punish players in the future. It causes frustration.
Especially when mistakes was made by the team and not the players.

I can understand that you are concerned about 'incorrect / abuse of progress', but this is such a small problem in the bigger picture of what the community & the players feel about this.
The outcome is that they feel this is a punishment, their progress is hampered. Their 'virtual existence' of a commander is affected, because of such a 'tiny issue'.

o7

A punishment for taking advantage of a broken rank system?

 

[TheTechnobear]

yeah, Ive some sympathy for those that earned a lot pre-U14.

theoretically, fdev could have got around this with U14 , by adjusting amount earned by exobiology by 'inflation'.
i.e scale up what you had earned to reflect new reward levels.

i.e.
exo earning = new ranking level cr * old ranking %

unfortunately, technically, I suspect that boat has now sailed....
the devs could only have done this before U14 hit... as they would have known all earning were from pre U14 payouts.
now its a bit more complicated... as earnings now are a mix of new and old payout levels


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frankly, buffs tend to an advantage to new players only... and by design, to encourage people to try new activities etc.
despite some, anomalies, I think Fdev have done a good job here... even if some will lose out a little bit in the short term.
(and the new payouts will mean those that have traditionally done exo will, I suspect, level up in very little time )

 

[Jabo Zerstorer]

This is correct
But it is not the entire picture

• So, with 430 millions credits i was 97% towards elite rank (let's go with my initial example)
• ranks get increased 20x (just saying) to keep them inline with the payout increases
• now i still have 430 millions payout, but this only corresponds to about 50% between Collector and Cataloguer
• so, even while on display i still have my Geneticist rank, i have to get the required points to make ir back up to Geneticist (at the same 20x increase), that is 4.4 billions
• then to recover the 97% progress loss, i will have to get another 4+ billions to get back to 97%

note:
the rank requirement numbers are taken from the wiki, then multiplied by 20x (an arbitrary multiplier - i have no idea how high they increased the ranking requirements, but the payouts were increased by about 20 times)
collector: 12,600,000 credits (x20 = 252 millions)
cataloguer: 32 millions (x20 = 640 millions)
...
geneticist: 216 millions (x20= 4.3 billions)
elite: 440 millions (x20 = 8.8 billions)

Fairly sure the rank requirments are the same as they were pre-Update 14. So 440,000,000 for Elite.

Scatch this.

They have increased but I very much doubt it's 20 times increase.

 

[Zandhond]

is it possible to use the rank data prior to the latest patch to use as a measuring point?
say if I became 22% past a certain rank, I would start at that rank point and continue from there with the new numbers instead of only looking at the total numbers.

 

[TheTechnobear]

They have increased but I very much doubt it's 20 times increase.

unless fdev tell us, we will only start to know new levels, when players start crossing the new thresholds.

(unless there is some way to get this data some other way?)

 

[bunker]

the rank requirement numbers are taken from the wiki, then multiplied by 20x (an arbitrary multiplier - i have no idea how high they increased the ranking requirements, but the payouts were increased by about 20 times)
collector: 12,600,000 credits (x20 = 252 millions)
cataloguer: 32 millions (x20 = 640 millions)
...
geneticist: 216 millions (x20= 4.3 billions)
elite: 440 millions (x20 = 8.8 billions)

I'm happy they rebalanced it. Guess we'll see where the actual "markers"/thresholds are. I did some testing a few days ago and with a "Road to riches" approach I could have reached Elite in 5-6 hours if all went well. It didn't feel like a tough but doable goal. Now, I do think the bar for exobiology was set very high previously so I'm hoping it's significantly less than x20 in the new rank thresholds.

 

[Northpin]

I can understand that you are concerned about 'incorrect / abuse of progress', but this is such a small problem in the bigger picture of what the community & the players feel about this.
The outcome is that they feel this is a punishment, their progress is hampered. Their 'virtual existence' of a commander is affected, because of such a 'tiny issue'.

Yea, about that.
I'm not really concerned about people getting Elite rank in 10-20h (i would get the elite rank in exo bio if it would take me 10-20h because that's what i feel it's worthy, but i wont invest my time in it if it takes me 200-300h - it;s not worth my time, i'd rather do other things)

I will say it again, i dont care if people get their ranks in 10h - the elite rank in exobio does not affect in any way the game balance, it's just a tag holding a very personal value
It is progress, but it's personal progress and it does not affect any other ingame metric. you get a tag and some colored suits out of it.

But the huge payouts increases? Those are affecting the entire game balance and are sort of uncalled for.
And one toon, in the starter sidewinder, with a g1 artemis, following the new spansh plotter for exo-bio road-to-riches- can get billions easily, with 0 character progress needed

***

So, to be honest, they should have left the ranking as it is.
440 millions for Elite is quite enough tbh (exploration is 300 millions, trading is 1bn - so quite in the ballpark)

They should have left the payouts the same.
But increase the first discovery bonus to like 500x the bio value. So a first discovery plant, worth of 20,000 credits, will get a 10 millions bonus.
That at least would have incentivized people to get out and EXPLORE new stuff, not to tag the same bubble plants following a get-rich guided tour around the bubble

 

[aRJay]

Fairly sure the rank requirments are the same as they were pre-Update 14. So 440,000,000 for Elite.

Scatch this.

They have increased but I very much doubt it's 20 times increase.

Hopefully the rank increase multiplier is less than the payout increase multiplier.

 

[Jabo Zerstorer]

unless fdev tell us, we will only start to know new levels, when players start crossing the new thresholds.

(unless there is some way to get this data some other way?)

Well my next Exobiology rank is Elite, so I'll keep an eye on things.

 

[TheTechnobear]

is it possible to use the rank data prior to the latest patch to use as a measuring point?
say if I became 22% past a certain rank, I would start at that rank point and continue from there with the new numbers instead of only looking at the total numbers.

this is what I alluded to in my post above....
it was likely possible, but its probably not that easy now... they'll keep limited amount of data per character.
given behaviour we see, I suspect just exo credit balance and ranking, so % is calc'd from balance.

once you go live with the change , the new payouts are in place, the waters a bit murky...

also realistically, I also suspect, given all the other (major) updates that were happening, probably the available amount of dev effort for this 'corner' of the game was limited.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

Hi Sally,
the big issue with this approach is that you erased any intermediary progress, which can mean a very significantly setback / progress removal

For example:

• if i was Geneticist, 430 millions contributed out of the 440 millions required to reach Elite
• so i was 97% towards Elite rank
• with the way you guys implemented the balance you erased all that big progress i was making towards the Elite rank
• to keep the progress, after this harmony (sorry ) i should have been given the "expericence" points required to maintain my 97% towards the Elite rank
• else, based on new ranking system, now i'm technically below Geneticist (in terms of points gained) and now i have to put a looooot more effort to recover the lost points and to get back to 97% progress towards Elite

Considering I went from 30% of Geneticist to Elite plus 25% in three hours, they had to do something. The advancement was absolutely ridiculous. I did in three hours what should have taken me three months or more to do.

If people think they hit a brick wall, that's normal. That's the way it was before with the very low payouts. At least now you get HUGE amounts of money for it.