Elite Dangerous Exobiology Rank Threshold Rebalance Information

[LCU No Fool Like One]

I think the rewards here are out of whack.

I do a lot of exploration though I'm a make money slow kind of guy as I explore for the sake of it not for making money I often don't bother doing a detailed scan of high value bodies but I will frequently composition scan biolology and did a lot of organic scanning until I got my first elite.

I've done 1.5million light years and earned 3.8billion from exploration and I have 7.5 billion in assets most of which I had help getting through cash cow CGs and through carrier sales. I've been playing since around 2016

I did a query on my organic scans stored in Canonn's database at today's prices and even without the bonus payments I would have earned 13.5 billion credits from them with just a year of normal gameplay probably nearly double that as most of them would have been first footfall. That is without even gaming the system

19million for stratum tectonicas which only takes me 60 seconds to get three scans is crazy. There are over 20,000 known locations of which 6700 are in the Inner Orion Spur. You would only need 52 of them to make a billion.

Frutexa Collum of which only 239 have been found to date comes in at 3 million. Considering that it is rare I would have expected to see a much higher prices on it.

The prices did need a buff but this just seems very unbalanced. Even if you keep the same scale of prices, making them comensurate with the level of difficulty locating them and rarity would make it feel more balanced.

Fungoida Setsis for instance or even Bark Mounds should pay a lot more than they do because they are often very hard to locate and next impossible find three close enoughto scan quickly.

Canonn have data from organic scans that could help in that regard if its not something Frontier are tracking https://canonn.fyi/biosheet we can also supply data about how fast people are scanning things,

All that said I'm happy to stuff my bank account with easy money. It enables me to do the things I like doing and keep my fleet carrier running. If I were as rich as Rackham I would be fine with that

 

[vanFace]

I seems Marvin is saying that he got his ranking during the week when using original scale with the bigger payout. So he is up to Elite I (due to the high payout with original scale). That means he has over $660,000,000 (original scale). With new scale, to get to Elite I you probably need > $4billion. So if he continues gathering... and get to, lets say $1b (which might be the next level at the new scale), he will likely drop back down to Taxonomist or lower ranking. So, if Marvin works for Rank (which I do), then I recommend he stop doing Exo so he will maintain the Elite I rank (although not real) he has, otherwise it will drop down ranks if he continues.

I can't understand how FDev is silent on this. Their post from this morning was pretty much : "it is what it is" I don't think they understand their screw up and how it impact players that drive for Rank

True. Those losing most with this change are the people that did the grind BEFORE the payout buff. Those that painstakingly made it to let's say Taxonomist. They will now see their rank progress bar not moving until they did almost the same work again. Why punish those that played the game as it was designed? Those that just did payout buff now keep the rank and the money. Double-win.
I understand that this was the technical easy way to mitigate the fall-out of the payout buff. However, it comes with the cost of alienating the very user-group that the initial buff was thought to appeal to. My suggestion would be to implement it so that - at least - the distance between the "virtual" rank and the "display" rank is reflected in the progress bar. This way people will see where they are in the double-grind without having to check the exo stats and looking into the rank table.

 

[Aunty Sledge]

We've run some numbers on ranks and on the limited data sets we've got at the moment the rewards went up 20 fold with patch 14, but the 14.01 rank limits were increased 30 fold.
This means some people will see rank demotions above and beyond that of a simple balance, even if they didn't take part of Exo between 14 and 14.01.

A 10x rank increase would have been fine, but 30, that's harsh. Even if it turns out to be 20 I'd still be put off doing any more Exo.

 

[Hellrider]

The prices did need a buff but this just seems very unbalanced. Even if you keep the same scale of prices, making them comensurate with the level of difficulty locating them and rarity would make it feel more balanced.

It.
With difficulty level, and rarity things like tectonicas should be close to bacterias, when we are talking about values

But as we can see, frontier and players don't care about balance and logic.

Extremally easy and fast money, and meaningless ranks- this is their problem.

PS: all ranks should be similar to combat- based on xp points, not credits. With more rare species- more xp points.
PS2: inara has better achievments, than IN GAME ranks.

 

[Mika L]

We've run some numbers on ranks and on the limited data sets we've got at the moment the rewards went up 20 fold with patch 14, but the 14.01 rank limits were increased 30 fold.
This means some people will see rank demotions above and beyond that of a simple balance, even if they didn't take part of Exo between 14 and 14.01.

A 10x rank increase would have been fine, but 30, that's harsh. Even if it turns out to be 20 I'd still be put off doing any more Exo.

Thanks for this info. I sold about 700 samples before Update 14 and became a Geneticist. Now I should do almost all of that work again to get my rank progress back! This is really unfair! Fortunately I sold some samples before 14.01 and got a promotion to Elite, which makes me feel a bit better about this.

 

[Commander Tredwell]

I feel that the Exobiology Rewards/Table still needs a review/amendment. For Example: In my squadron, a CMDR achieved Elite Exobiology two days before Update 14, he had found 1,584 samples. In my case 1 was at 1,213 samples, helped by Update 14 and further 13 further biosamples, I achieved Elite Exobiology and 52% Elite I. Then after Update 14, a third CMDR returned from the Black and traded in his 384 Biosamples, and was rewarded with Elite V with Update 14. That can't be right. The amendment means that CMDR 3's progress will be put on hold until he achieves Elite V under the new Ranks!

 

[Marvin the Martian]

One thing is certain: FDev have really made a hot, steaming pile of poop out of this. It's a mistake that should have never been made and it's turned into a colossal, walking, talking, breathing cluster.

I don't recall ever seeing something like this happen in any game I've ever played.

 

[Zandhond]

I feel that the Exobiology Rewards/Table still needs a review/amendment. For Example: In my squadron, a CMDR achieved Elite Exobiology two days before Update 14, he had found 1,584 samples. In my case 1 was at 1,213 samples, helped by Update 14 and further 13 further biosamples, I achieved Elite Exobiology and 52% Elite I. Then after Update 14, a third CMDR returned from the Black and traded in his 384 Biosamples, and was rewarded with Elite V with Update 14. That can't be right. The amendment means that CMDR 3's progress will be put on hold until he achieves Elite V under the new Ranks!

So you would punish CMDR 3 that did nothing wrong by borking their progress?
How about your own progress?

Fact is FDev messed this up by not applying both changes (higher payout and higher thresholds) simultaneously, for reasons we don't know; could've been technical, human error or whatever.
The elegant and Holiday spirited way to solve this is to apply the set rules for the specific time periods. That's how laws work.
It's not necessary to mess up cmdrs progress.

Adjusting the rules retroactively should be avoided at all times, for obvious reasons!

period A: pre payout increase in November
period B: post payout increase - adjustment rank increase
period C: post adjustment rank increase

Let the cmdrs that speedrunned their way through Exobiology be happy, It's not going to hurt the ones that are taking their time.
What is hurting me is that i was Collector period A, then went to Ecologist during B and am now in Limbo on my progress bar.

That's my hurt, your hurt may be different.

 

[Aunty Sledge]

Tredwell, if my sums are correct you are now a Collector, and your next rank will be Catalogue at about 960M.

 

[Hellrider]

"nothing wrong by borking"
"if they milked obviously bug let them be happy"

XD

I will tell you all story, what happened in one game, where they know, what to do with exploiters.
Long, long ago in some game after patch players discovered bug.
CRASHING their vessel had much higher rewards, than regular gameplay by...you know, fighting with this vessels.
So hordes of people milked it by suicides at first minute of game instead playing, what of course boosted their progress, and destroyed game for few days for other people, which wanted to play. Not grind.

So when they fixed it bang! XP earned by this bug were...removed

 

[Pralines]

FDev could/should at least communicate the new thresholds of the ranks

 

[AJH16]

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

This needs to change or you are going to lose players from this. I can tell you my Dad and I are both done with the game unless this is improved and we're both fairly large spenders because we believe in supporting the game. This is literally the worst possible choice that could have been made. You have effectively screwed people over in every conceivable way with this change.

1) People who had spent hours of effort to progress have had their efforts invalidated and are now really only 3-4 ranks in again and have to redo their work to re-attain their rank. The fact the label stays doesn't impact the fact that nothing they do will provide any progress at all until they earn the rank again.

2) People who were able to attain the rank trivially during the excess time are now incredibly difficult to catch up to which has had insult added to it by the removal of progression that was hard earned, so not only are you rewarding people who did very little, but penalizing those who did a ton of work.

3) The lack of any progress indication makes it a completely demoralizing effort to gain the rank back because you get 0 indication of progress for hundreds of hours of effort. Nobody in their right minds is doing that.

Literally any alternative would be better than this. (From least appealing to most).
1) Even just a simple reset of ranks and removing current ranks would be better. It at least fixes problems 2 and 3. It still removes a ton of hard work from people that advanced before U14 and is still unfair to them, but it gives a realistic view of progress and a sense of progression. It also fixes those who jumped ahead easily and atleast makes things fair on total financial progress, if not on effort contributed. I would much, much rather lose my hard earned Elite and see my progress and see how I really compare with those who did a few hours of effort to get Elite V while it was borked. It would suck to have my earlier efforts discarded, but it would suck 150% less than the current situation and would be enough to keep me playing the game, though I still wouldn't be happy about it.

2) Restore the previous levels or at least make it much shorter than it was. This isn't ideal as it doesn't correct any of the main problems directly, but it reduces the sense of being screwed if it's not that hard to recover from. Right now, even if you prioritize all high value plants that are near each other, you are looking at around 150 hours to Elite and 75 per Elite rank after that. If it took 1/3 of that, then the effort to get back on track for the vast majority would still be less than what it was to finish the progression before the update. Ideally this would also include resetting ranks so progress showed, but as long as it is less than 2-3 days of effort (optimized in game time) to get to Elite V, it would be acceptable even without a rebalance of earned ranks.

3) Recalculate totals based on obtained samples at current values, but leave ranks. This should be trivial as all current samples are known and it should be trivial to recalculate. This still leaves 2 as a problem, but fixes 1 and 3 as progress bars would be restored for anyone that hadn't been taking serious advantage of U14 atleast.

4) Recalculate totals based on obtained samples at current values and reset ranks based on the new value, using an equivalent required level of progress to pre U14. This is the first "good" option in my opinion. It leaves Exobiology being far slower than it probably should be, but it fixes all of the major problems and is universally fair.

5) Recalculate totals based on obtained samples at current values and reset ranks based on new values using an easier curve than it was previously. I suggest this as the best option because it limits the impact on people who earned stuff during U14 and also gives a bonus recognizing those who contributed pre-U14. It rebalances exobiology to be more attainable and more in line with other rank advancement.

If one of these 5 isn't done, I'm pretty sure I'm done with the game, or at a minimum taking a long break and certainly not supporting the game financially anymore. Any one of these alternatives would be good enough to fix it enough for me to stay and keep contributing because I can't overstate how upset and disappointed about how poorly this was handled initially. It seems like it really was not thought through at all, but I'm a firm believer that acknowledging mistakes and correcting them is a fine and respectable course of action and easily forgive mistakes. The problem just comes if nothing is done to correct it.

 

[AJH16]

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

Not that quickly. Exobiology was already the slowest rank short of CQC. It takes around 150 hours of effort to get elite, even if you optimize and then another 75 hours or so of effort per Elite rank, and that's assuming you optimize.

 

[AJH16]

True. Those losing most with this change are the people that did the grind BEFORE the payout buff. Those that painstakingly made it to let's say Taxonomist. They will now see their rank progress bar not moving until they did almost the same work again. Why punish those that played the game as it was designed? Those that just did payout buff now keep the rank and the money. Double-win.
I understand that this was the technical easy way to mitigate the fall-out of the payout buff. However, it comes with the cost of alienating the very user-group that the initial buff was thought to appeal to. My suggestion would be to implement it so that - at least - the distance between the "virtual" rank and the "display" rank is reflected in the progress bar. This way people will see where they are in the double-grind without having to check the exo stats and looking into the rank table.

Exactly, my father and I were both Elite, my father was Elite 1 actually, pre-U14. Now we're collectors in progress if not in rank. And we won't see any progress until we grind for over 100 hours of exobiology. All the while realizing that people got Elite V from about 20 hours of work and we won't catch back up to them for another 350 hours of work on top of the 150+ hours of work we already put in. It's not only enough to make us have no interest in Exobiology anymore, but also enough to have no interest in the game at all, since we were playing to work on getting all the elite progress and that's just been destroyed for us.

 

[Zandhond]

"nothing wrong by borking"
"if they milked obviously bug let them be happy"

XD

but not only the ones that milked are affected; everyone that handed in data between the two adjustments is affected and has a progress bar that isn't relaying the correct values.

 

[vanFace]

but not only the ones that milked are affected; everyone that handed in data between the two adjustments is affected and has a progress bar that isn't relaying the correct values.

Everybody. Not only everyone that handed in data between the adjustments. That's the nature of a rank re-scaling: it affects everybody. What FDev could have done, though, is to recalculate the credit scores for those samples handed in before the adjustment, thus being fair to the people playing before the "buff". Alas, I don't see that this was done. If it was, somebody should see a factor 20 of his exo-bio credit status (sans the credits he made in between adjustments, of course). Anybody sees that?

 

[AJH16]

Everybody. Not only everyone that handed in data between the adjustments. That's the nature of a rank re-scaling: it affects everybody. What FDev could have done, though, is to recalculate the credit scores for those samples handed in before the adjustment, thus being fair to the people playing before the "buff". Alas, I don't see that this was done. If it was, somebody should see a factor 20 of his exo-bio credit status (sans the credits he made in between adjustments, of course). Anybody sees that?

No, I was elite before U14. I'm not 0% progress towards Elite 1 and am effectively a collector (the third rank), so I won't see any progress until I put in another 100+ hours of work, assuming my optimized list of samples doesn't run out since I also can't re-scan the plants that I've now invalidated for essentially no progress.
I get no indication of progress in game, no progress against people who did far less effort in rankings in Inara. There's literally no incentive or sense of progress aside from credits for the effort and I already have billions of credits and far more enjoyable ways to make credits, so Exobiology is completely thankless now with no reason to do it until I put in months of effort just to see any indication of progress in any way, all while knowing that all of that is just to catch up with people who got Elite V in a week.

Add to that that this puts Exobiology back in to being as difficult as it was before and it means this kills Exobiology entirely. And possibly kills the game as a whole.

• This makes it the defacto credit farm for new players, completely bypassing any sense of credit progress as they can immediately start earning billions of credits immediately on new character creation. This is going to seriously throw off the early game flow and burn a lot of new players out before they get in to the game.
• Anyone that was doing exo for rank before is not going to do it anymore because they get no progress.
• Anyone that hasn't made progress yet isn't going to start now, because they hadn't started before due to the slow progress and progress is just as slow again now.

Caveat, a few people may still decide that it's now worth the grind since it produces so many credits, but we're talking about needing so many credits to get to Elite V at this point that it doesn't even make sense anymore for credits to be an incentive either. You'd need to earn something like 30 billion credits if they kept the same rate of progress as before with the new payouts. Even if someone earns credits exclusively from Exobiology (unlikely), they would long since pass the point of being motivated by credits by the time they reach 30 billion.

 

[vanFace]

No, I was elite before U14. I'm not 0% progress towards Elite 1 and am effectively a collector (the third rank), so I won't see any progress until I put in another 100+ hours of work, assuming my optimized list of samples doesn't run out since I also can't re-scan the plants that I've now invalidated for essentially no progress.
I get no indication of progress in game, no progress against people who did far less effort in rankings in Inara. There's literally no incentive or sense of progress aside from credits for the effort and I already have billions of credits and far more enjoyable ways to make credits, so Exobiology is completely thankless now with no reason to do it until I put in months of effort just to see any indication of progress in any way, all while knowing that all of that is just to catch up with people who got Elite V in a week.

I see. Well, looks like we'll have to accept that ED is now a game were every now and then player progress is deleted. I wonder what will be next... combat perhaps? That would really, really hurt many folks.

 

[AJH16]

I see. Well, looks like we'll have to accept that ED is now a game were every now and then player progress is deleted. I wonder what will be next... combat perhaps? That would really, really hurt many folks.

Maybe they should try it with CQC... I'm sure that would revive that dead feature...

Seriously though, that's the main reason I said I'm done with the game if they don't fix this. This ruins a big part of the game for me since it throws off my entire idea of liking to work on being a rank completionist, but beyond that, the much bigger issue is that it also breaks my trust of the designers and product managers if they can't see how damaging this is. If they aren't able to see it and fix it, then I really can't trust them and invest more of my time in something they can be expected to screw up similarly in the future.

My sincere hope however is that this is a really bad mistake and they'll realize it. They clearly realized that payouts were too low (which they were) and patched it without thinking about the consequences. They quickly noticed that it completely threw things off and made another quick, rash correction that turned out to be even worse than the initial error. What I really want to see at this point is:

- First, an acknowledgement, ASAP, that the current situation is an error and they realize it.
- Second, a thoughtful fix to it that corrects the problems and makes a more proper fix to the problem they've created without creating more issues.

I don't really care how long the actual fix takes as long as they can acknowledge that they aren't happy with the current outcome and realize it needs to be fixed and why. I'm not touching exo unless I happen to want credits for some reason, until it's fixed simply because there is no sense of progress, but I'd go back to doing other things while I waited as it would restore trust in the development team, and that's my single largest concern.

 

[Jabo Zerstorer]

Not that quickly. Exobiology was already the slowest rank short of CQC. It takes around 150 hours of effort to get elite, even if you optimize and then another 75 hours or so of effort per Elite rank, and that's assuming you optimize.

I don't think the new Rank thresholds have been determined yet. It may only be a slight increase from before, so rank progression may well be much faster than it was previously.