Elite Dangerous - Thargoid Counterstrike Rebalance
- Thread starter Paul_Crowther
- Start date
Hopefully the same thing at Thor where they recapture the spires by abandoning the nearby controls will come into play at that point.
Edit: I had a long, long rant I posted initially, but on posting it, I couldn't stop thinking about it, and I think I really just was describing the concept of Railroading.
When a DM seems to be forcing you down a certain path with a certain timing, it ruins the experience, that's the long and short of it. Games like this need to be a collaboration between DM and players, not just players sitting there listening to a story.
In the future, It'd be really nice if we tried to work together, not against each other. Otherwise, I just don't have much desire to play.
Hey Paul,
I had to really think through exactly why this bothered me, and with a week or so of thinking, I'd like to share my thoughts.
On a fundamental level, a big part of my motivation for coming back and participating in the war is because my effort seems to matter. Weeks like we had, with all the players working together, making great strides, feels great because that effort matters. We are changing something bigger than us. We want others to participate because their effort makes our effort matter MORE, not less.
When devs step in and say, "No, you're going too fast, we're going to slow you down so you will finish when we want you to finish," it doesn't just invalidate our future effort; what it says is that all our prior effort also didn't matter. We aren't actually doing anything meaningful, we're just a rat on a wheel, spinning away the hours until the devs are ready for us to move forwards.
And if that's the case, why am I even bothering? This is the exact reason I quit the game back at the start of the war. It seemed clear that there was no intention of making player effort matter; they had a clear objective in mind, they were perfectly willing to railroad us to that objective, and every iota of extra effort I put in only served to make the war harder for everyone else. The harder I tried, the harder they would make the war, and the less everyone's effort would change. We weren't actually participating in anything meaningful, we were just running around playing pretend while devs changed the rules to drag us right where they wanted us to be.
So I quit. And the game got easier for everyone else. You created a scenario where the best move was, literally, not to play.
That finally seemed to change when the devs were ready to let us win the war. Yes, we knew that there was an end state we were working towards, but the timeline, that, at least, seemed to be on us. We could make it go as fast or slow as we wanted it to go. The faster we go, the faster we get our rewards! Fair enough!
But then you had to go pull back the veil again. We did TOO well, so rather than rewarding us, you punish us.
It's not even about the actual impact of the pods themselves. Not really. Statistically speaking, they're still probably the best way to win the war. The problem is, far more people enjoy doing Spire Sites, and if I try really hard and we complete a bunch of systems this week, the devs will want to slow us down, and they'll be less likely to re-activate a spire site next week when the last one goes down. This will leave a lot of players with nothing to do, which WILL slow down the war - but which does so at the cost of the enjoyment of dozens of players. My effort to win the war will DIRECTLY make the experience worse for dozens of players.
And much as I expected, podding efforts have dropped off massively.
Now don't get me wrong. I GET that designing a comprehensive experience for thousands of players at once is a tough, tough challenge. Ultimately, DMing involves no small amount of manipulation and trickery to make people FEEL like their effort matters when, in reality, you control everything.
That said, there are good ways and bad ways to manipulate your players and their experience. It's especially important not to draw back the veil on the underlying reality like you did here. And a critical aspect of that is, you should NEVER punish players for what they're doing RIGHT. You WANT us to want to participate, to want to make a difference, to want to get OTHER players participating. That's not the problem. The problem, presumably, is that you don't have the next content written yet - and fair enough. Happens to the best of us.
But the appropriate way to make a game last longer isn't to nerf the players, it's to make the game itself more challenging and more fun.
A great example from DND: Say you've got a player who LOVES to use Fireball. He's made a pattern of fireballing groups of enemies and doing massive damage all at once and ruining otherwise great encounters. Now, you could nerf fireball so it has a smaller radius, but that just spoils his fun and makes the game worse. That guy's been leveling up for ages to get access to that spell, he deserves to enjoy it for a while! But that doesn't mean he should be dominating EVERY encounter.
A better approach would be, have the enemies learn from their mistakes and stop arraying themselves in 40 foot circles! By spreading themselves out over a larger area, they can avoid the damage of the fireball WITHOUT making it seem unfair to the poor wizard. Or you could include fire-resistant enemies, encouraging him to bring other spells! If you find yourself going into the Plane of Fire, you're going to be a fool if you bring fire spells.
But on the flipside, there's also the matter of expectations and payoff. Let's imagine you start the game by showing us the enemy army, which is a load of frost warriors. So your players level up for ages waiting for fireball so they can attack and lay waste to this army. Only, they reach that point, you reveal that 2/3rds of these frost warriors are also resistant to fire. You have destroyed their expectations and removed their payoff.
That's essentially what you've done to players like CMDR Luriant. In a dnd session, they'd have every justification to quit the game and seek out a DM who isn't going to sockblock them at the last moment. More than that, they almost certainly wish the other players hadn't done so well it ended up getting their hard work neutered.
---
See the problem here? Rather than encouraging us to work together, you've made it so that our effort conflicts. Rather than rewarding us, you punish us. Rather than wanting other players to be playing, participating, enjoying, we want other players to leave so we can enjoy OUR content for longer.
Rather than being players vs the game, it's players vs the devs.
Nobody wants the DM to be your enemy. You can beat a fair game, you can beat other players, but nobody can beat the DM.
And why play a game you can't possibly win?
I had to really think through exactly why this bothered me, and with a week or so of thinking, I'd like to share my thoughts.
On a fundamental level, a big part of my motivation for coming back and participating in the war is because my effort seems to matter. Weeks like we had, with all the players working together, making great strides, feels great because that effort matters. We are changing something bigger than us. We want others to participate because their effort makes our effort matter MORE, not less.
When devs step in and say, "No, you're going too fast, we're going to slow you down so you will finish when we want you to finish," it doesn't just invalidate our future effort; what it says is that all our prior effort also didn't matter. We aren't actually doing anything meaningful, we're just a rat on a wheel, spinning away the hours until the devs are ready for us to move forwards.
And if that's the case, why am I even bothering? This is the exact reason I quit the game back at the start of the war. It seemed clear that there was no intention of making player effort matter; they had a clear objective in mind, they were perfectly willing to railroad us to that objective, and every iota of extra effort I put in only served to make the war harder for everyone else. The harder I tried, the harder they would make the war, and the less everyone's effort would change. We weren't actually participating in anything meaningful, we were just running around playing pretend while devs changed the rules to drag us right where they wanted us to be.
So I quit. And the game got easier for everyone else. You created a scenario where the best move was, literally, not to play.
The Illusion of Control
That finally seemed to change when the devs were ready to let us win the war. Yes, we knew that there was an end state we were working towards, but the timeline, that, at least, seemed to be on us. We could make it go as fast or slow as we wanted it to go. The faster we go, the faster we get our rewards! Fair enough!
But then you had to go pull back the veil again. We did TOO well, so rather than rewarding us, you punish us.
It's not even about the actual impact of the pods themselves. Not really. Statistically speaking, they're still probably the best way to win the war. The problem is, far more people enjoy doing Spire Sites, and if I try really hard and we complete a bunch of systems this week, the devs will want to slow us down, and they'll be less likely to re-activate a spire site next week when the last one goes down. This will leave a lot of players with nothing to do, which WILL slow down the war - but which does so at the cost of the enjoyment of dozens of players. My effort to win the war will DIRECTLY make the experience worse for dozens of players.
And much as I expected, podding efforts have dropped off massively.
The challenges of being a good DM
Now don't get me wrong. I GET that designing a comprehensive experience for thousands of players at once is a tough, tough challenge. Ultimately, DMing involves no small amount of manipulation and trickery to make people FEEL like their effort matters when, in reality, you control everything.
That said, there are good ways and bad ways to manipulate your players and their experience. It's especially important not to draw back the veil on the underlying reality like you did here. And a critical aspect of that is, you should NEVER punish players for what they're doing RIGHT. You WANT us to want to participate, to want to make a difference, to want to get OTHER players participating. That's not the problem. The problem, presumably, is that you don't have the next content written yet - and fair enough. Happens to the best of us.
But the appropriate way to make a game last longer isn't to nerf the players, it's to make the game itself more challenging and more fun.
A great example from DND: Say you've got a player who LOVES to use Fireball. He's made a pattern of fireballing groups of enemies and doing massive damage all at once and ruining otherwise great encounters. Now, you could nerf fireball so it has a smaller radius, but that just spoils his fun and makes the game worse. That guy's been leveling up for ages to get access to that spell, he deserves to enjoy it for a while! But that doesn't mean he should be dominating EVERY encounter.
A better approach would be, have the enemies learn from their mistakes and stop arraying themselves in 40 foot circles! By spreading themselves out over a larger area, they can avoid the damage of the fireball WITHOUT making it seem unfair to the poor wizard. Or you could include fire-resistant enemies, encouraging him to bring other spells! If you find yourself going into the Plane of Fire, you're going to be a fool if you bring fire spells.
But on the flipside, there's also the matter of expectations and payoff. Let's imagine you start the game by showing us the enemy army, which is a load of frost warriors. So your players level up for ages waiting for fireball so they can attack and lay waste to this army. Only, they reach that point, you reveal that 2/3rds of these frost warriors are also resistant to fire. You have destroyed their expectations and removed their payoff.
That's essentially what you've done to players like CMDR Luriant. In a dnd session, they'd have every justification to quit the game and seek out a DM who isn't going to sockblock them at the last moment. More than that, they almost certainly wish the other players hadn't done so well it ended up getting their hard work neutered.
---
See the problem here? Rather than encouraging us to work together, you've made it so that our effort conflicts. Rather than rewarding us, you punish us. Rather than wanting other players to be playing, participating, enjoying, we want other players to leave so we can enjoy OUR content for longer.
Rather than being players vs the game, it's players vs the devs.
Nobody wants the DM to be your enemy. You can beat a fair game, you can beat other players, but nobody can beat the DM.
And why play a game you can't possibly win?
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I like you long answer most, but what you say its how I feel.
Between the progress lost each week, and the reduced effect of pods BUT applied to a good chunk of systems, the devs create a mechanic that encourage stockpiling like we did with the tissues, even without selling to other fleet carriers, so was a lone work. Took time to have the data and see if this work was valid, but from Captain-MD that did the math, to all the players in ReForge Aegis, we made it. And I stockpile, waiting for the day that my pods were needed.
5 hours before this thread was created, I shared my concern in Aegis Reforged Coalition:
"10:35 30th August: [Canonn]Luriant: One of the reason for choosing Cocijo was the fear of FDev tinkering resistance number, so a big unload event will avoid any adjust, but its too late for this. But I keep in mind doing a massive unload event for cocijo, everybody at the same hour, because from other tissue farming events, FDev have some power to change the system strenght in midgame, without waiting for thursday maintenance"
I don't fear thargoids. I fear the hand of god.
I had pride that the Thargoid War was less streamlined that the Helldiver2 objectives, with the players choosing the best course of action. My mistake, the storyline matter more than the player effort.
I will propose a valid adjustment for pods. In 6-june, Captain-Md posted this math: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...-target-systems.612125/page-286#post-10386513
At this moment, we have 41 Counterstrike systems.
All the movement with pods was, because we can work and at least conquer 41 system in a single sweep.
I understand that something went wrong, with each killed Titan, the number of Counterstrike increased. We took notice.
A balance, "Hey, we put the number of CS back to 18.07 or 18.06 numbers, our previous revision, because we have more and more counterstrikes, not as planned".
And perfect, our predictions for the war don't change, we can fight for those 40 systems that existed just before the patch. The number that started everything.
Meanwhile, I stopped playing, and returned to other games, SpaceEngine was on sale. I keep doing a lot of work in reddit, because steam sales bring a lot of new players. But I lost my interest in the war, except for the 2M bonds in titan assault. Minimum effort, because the war will end when Devs want.
Between the progress lost each week, and the reduced effect of pods BUT applied to a good chunk of systems, the devs create a mechanic that encourage stockpiling like we did with the tissues, even without selling to other fleet carriers, so was a lone work. Took time to have the data and see if this work was valid, but from Captain-MD that did the math, to all the players in ReForge Aegis, we made it. And I stockpile, waiting for the day that my pods were needed.
5 hours before this thread was created, I shared my concern in Aegis Reforged Coalition:
"10:35 30th August: [Canonn]Luriant: One of the reason for choosing Cocijo was the fear of FDev tinkering resistance number, so a big unload event will avoid any adjust, but its too late for this. But I keep in mind doing a massive unload event for cocijo, everybody at the same hour, because from other tissue farming events, FDev have some power to change the system strenght in midgame, without waiting for thursday maintenance"
I don't fear thargoids. I fear the hand of god.
I had pride that the Thargoid War was less streamlined that the Helldiver2 objectives, with the players choosing the best course of action. My mistake, the storyline matter more than the player effort.
I will propose a valid adjustment for pods. In 6-june, Captain-Md posted this math: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...-target-systems.612125/page-286#post-10386513
At this moment, we have 41 Counterstrike systems.
All the movement with pods was, because we can work and at least conquer 41 system in a single sweep.
I understand that something went wrong, with each killed Titan, the number of Counterstrike increased. We took notice.
A balance, "Hey, we put the number of CS back to 18.07 or 18.06 numbers, our previous revision, because we have more and more counterstrikes, not as planned".
And perfect, our predictions for the war don't change, we can fight for those 40 systems that existed just before the patch. The number that started everything.
Meanwhile, I stopped playing, and returned to other games, SpaceEngine was on sale. I keep doing a lot of work in reddit, because steam sales bring a lot of new players. But I lost my interest in the war, except for the 2M bonds in titan assault. Minimum effort, because the war will end when Devs want.
Here is from another player perspective on the issue. I mainly participate in Invasion ground port defenses, AXCZs and Spire Operations.
I started doing pod rescues as a side thing when I wanted to do something else besides Spires and my normal wingmates were not on. Coming originally from the mining community, mining a Titan for biopods and saving people while also helping push the war effort puts a bug check mark in the box for me. My efforts mean something beyond just killing murder flowers. As of this post, I have turned in over 10000 pods, most if which were taken from dying Titans but I have since joined others in working on Raijin (2000 pods).
The strong handed nerf by the Devs put a sour taste in my mouth. My desire to do pod rescues waned because the time I put into it meant nothing. My time theory crafting with other CMDRs and building the ideal ship became a waste of time and effort. The spark ignighted by fellow CMDRs when we discovered the impact of active pod rescues immediately snuffed out when the god-hand change was made.
I cannot except a strong handed approach. At least give a story reason. Its crap like this that pushes players away. The recent engineering changes brought new life to the entire community. Dont punish us for playing the game.
I started doing pod rescues as a side thing when I wanted to do something else besides Spires and my normal wingmates were not on. Coming originally from the mining community, mining a Titan for biopods and saving people while also helping push the war effort puts a bug check mark in the box for me. My efforts mean something beyond just killing murder flowers. As of this post, I have turned in over 10000 pods, most if which were taken from dying Titans but I have since joined others in working on Raijin (2000 pods).
The strong handed nerf by the Devs put a sour taste in my mouth. My desire to do pod rescues waned because the time I put into it meant nothing. My time theory crafting with other CMDRs and building the ideal ship became a waste of time and effort. The spark ignighted by fellow CMDRs when we discovered the impact of active pod rescues immediately snuffed out when the god-hand change was made.
I cannot except a strong handed approach. At least give a story reason. Its crap like this that pushes players away. The recent engineering changes brought new life to the entire community. Dont punish us for playing the game.
Devs might have expected lower turn-ins given how challenging it is to collect the pods and only storable by carrier owners. Would have been nice to change the basis to
"x" benefit is given per pod divided by number of active counterstrike systems
but then loss of pod progress at uncompleted systems each Thursday would become an issue
I got about 100 pods an hour last night and suspect I'd help the war effort more by doing other activities. Reduction to 15 systems won't change my effort though as I like the cat and mouse activity, with opportunistic killing of scythes. Delivering pods is 3-4 jumps in each direction and is a reasonable break at the start / end of a session
I had intended storing for Cocijo but believe it makes more sense to finish Raijin now and I do feel the pain of those who have stockpiled
"x" benefit is given per pod divided by number of active counterstrike systems
but then loss of pod progress at uncompleted systems each Thursday would become an issue
I got about 100 pods an hour last night and suspect I'd help the war effort more by doing other activities. Reduction to 15 systems won't change my effort though as I like the cat and mouse activity, with opportunistic killing of scythes. Delivering pods is 3-4 jumps in each direction and is a reasonable break at the start / end of a session
I had intended storing for Cocijo but believe it makes more sense to finish Raijin now and I do feel the pain of those who have stockpiled
Insofar as Counterstrike systems have also caused past problems and only really found their purpose as recently as July 3310 when the reactivated ports under attack appeared, another possible idea is just to be rid of them:
- Continue offering ports under attack in populated Control systems, just with the red under-attack-port marker, removing all the purple Counterstrike markers.
- Alternatively, use the purple Counterstrike icon only for those reactivated ports.
- Move Titan rescues back to providing peripheral progress with a percentage effect on the outermost ten Control systems, alongside Spire sites doing so.
- Counterstrike systems have motivated too many other changes—a prime indication of something which does not fit well.
- Without Titan rescues extending to all Counterstrike systems, the Counterstrike markers once again mean nothing at all for many empty Control systems.
- As with Spire sites and peripheral systems, there is no indication which Counterstrike systems will be affected by Titan rescues.
- Titan rescues have helped with peripheral progress in the past as a temporary means to prevent them from destroying Spire sites.
- Using Titan rescues to assist the periphery made for a fun couple of weeks, and that actually made sense as a permanent change!
- Alongside the update 18.06 peripheral progress changes, Titan rescues would become one more action freed from planning based on Thursdays.
Unfortunately, pod rescues have basically died. A few weeks ago we were in the ~25k range. Last week, pod rescuers did 3500-ish, and that's almost entirely one diehard player.
The problem is, the trust is gone. Pods are still nominally a decent thing to do, but why should we bother when playing too hard just is going to get us nerfed again?
It'd be nice to have some sort of acknowledgement that this was a bad move, promise that you won't do it again, and maybe throw us a bone, like giving rescue ship missions to save people from the Titans.
The problem is, the trust is gone. Pods are still nominally a decent thing to do, but why should we bother when playing too hard just is going to get us nerfed again?
It'd be nice to have some sort of acknowledgement that this was a bad move, promise that you won't do it again, and maybe throw us a bone, like giving rescue ship missions to save people from the Titans.
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I guess of all these actions, the last one is the most probable one. Forget the first two.
I see you've activated three more spires.
Guess that's all we're doing from now on.
Honestly, I'm not sure why you would design content and then as soon as players start using it, nerf it into the ground. Pod rescues don't even pay that well.
And besides, the spread of counterstrike systems around the titans means it's not even going to be that big of an issue. Sure, you cut off the first 30 systems right at the start, but then you get to a point where the Spires aren't impacting Counterstrikes anymore and the whole thing slows down. Worst case, Cocijo would have lost ~45 systems in week 1, and then everything slows down to normal. If that were too fast, you could always have done a CG to slow things down further. Anyone in tune with the war sim would know that.
It might behoove you to ask for some player input, especially the players most in tune with the war. We'd(heck, they'd; I'm by no means the most informed) be happy to offer suggestions that would slow things down while remaining enjoyable and not breaking the immersion.
Gladly! Leave populated systems as valid targets, but increase weekly attacks to 6–8 and maximum range to 20 Ly.