If so, they should bring back painite selling at 780k/ton
Exobiology is broken (payouts/rank)
- Thread starter CMDR Rusty Dog
- Start date
If so, they should bring back painite selling at 780k/ton
oooooerrrrr when I were a lad I had to earn my Elite ranks the hard grindy way, so I'll make damn sure the noobs have to do it like I did!
It's just not fair otherwise. /s
Source: https://youtu.be/VAdlkunflRs
It's just not fair otherwise. /s
I've only logged 70 to 80 hours in Odyssey so far (about 2,000 hours in Horizons before). And almost all of that Odyssey time was in Team play with a friend who's new to Elite, and had only the starting Sidewinder.
Starting just after the 4.0 "demo" was released, we have done almost exclusively Biological exploration play, and enjoyed it greatly. So in those 75 hours, my friend went from the Sidewinder to owning a Cobra Mk3 and Type 6 (both nicely fitted), and about $6 million in the bank. This seemed like a slightly slow progression, but the gameplay hunting systems and biologicals has been very laid back, chill out type play. No rush to anywhere, just enjoying the fantastic views and the cooperative play.
Within 3 play sessions (6 ot 7 hours?) of the Exobiology payout boost, my friend now has stored the Cobra Mk 3 and Type 6, and has an excellently fitted Krait Mk2, and about $180 million in cash reserves.
I'm not sure whether this payout boost might be a bug, or just an effort from Frontier to drive player interaction with Odyssey and surface gameplay.
From a gameplay perspective, personally it matters little to me. I already was worth a few billion and did the Exobiology play as an extension of my enjoying exploration. I never explored to get rich, I mined and traded for the money. But for my friend, I can say that with the fast money his gameplay interest and excitement have surged. What I think about (and he doesn't) is all the missed out progression through the ships that I had. That feeling of barely affording some new ship module upgrade, or the white knuckle feel of hauling a large cargo paid for with a huge chunk of my own money, and keeping my eyes peeled for pirates all the way to the next station.
But maybe that was just my own experience. He's enjoying each play session, and now looking for more things to do. We're fitting out to do some trade and rescue missions to support the systems under Thargoid attack. And with the comfy cash reserves, he's not seeming too bothered at the risks.
I guess we're playing, and that's good for the game.
Starting just after the 4.0 "demo" was released, we have done almost exclusively Biological exploration play, and enjoyed it greatly. So in those 75 hours, my friend went from the Sidewinder to owning a Cobra Mk3 and Type 6 (both nicely fitted), and about $6 million in the bank. This seemed like a slightly slow progression, but the gameplay hunting systems and biologicals has been very laid back, chill out type play. No rush to anywhere, just enjoying the fantastic views and the cooperative play.
Within 3 play sessions (6 ot 7 hours?) of the Exobiology payout boost, my friend now has stored the Cobra Mk 3 and Type 6, and has an excellently fitted Krait Mk2, and about $180 million in cash reserves.
I'm not sure whether this payout boost might be a bug, or just an effort from Frontier to drive player interaction with Odyssey and surface gameplay.
From a gameplay perspective, personally it matters little to me. I already was worth a few billion and did the Exobiology play as an extension of my enjoying exploration. I never explored to get rich, I mined and traded for the money. But for my friend, I can say that with the fast money his gameplay interest and excitement have surged. What I think about (and he doesn't) is all the missed out progression through the ships that I had. That feeling of barely affording some new ship module upgrade, or the white knuckle feel of hauling a large cargo paid for with a huge chunk of my own money, and keeping my eyes peeled for pirates all the way to the next station.
But maybe that was just my own experience. He's enjoying each play session, and now looking for more things to do. We're fitting out to do some trade and rescue missions to support the systems under Thargoid attack. And with the comfy cash reserves, he's not seeming too bothered at the risks.
I guess we're playing, and that's good for the game.
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
John F Kennedy
Reward should be commensurate with both the time commitment and the difficulty, if not for ethical fairness' sake then at least for game balance. How boring the task is shouldn't matter because a task in a game should never be boring, but that's not the world we live in.
More realistically Frontier must have noticed an abysmal rate of engagement with exobiology and simply took the course of action they knew would increase it.
Alternatively they could have made it more fun instead of more rewarding but that sounds like a lot of work.
I'm genuinely not being argumentative for argument's sake.
BTW I've always been a "poor explorer" - all the stuff I've gotten has been earned through time. I did one grind only, many many years ago, and that was the Empire grind. Never again. I haven't even manged to get enough Fed rank for a Corvette.
I can't afford to get a Carrier either - because I've never even reached more than 2 Billion in cash.
Also, I've spent more hours on Captain's Log than playing the game. Getting the multiple billions required for a Carrier is going to take me many more years, probably.
I just find it odd that folks think buffing payouts for exobiology is a bad idea. I spent at least 2 hours today on a single planet getting 8 out of 8 species sampled - a couple of the species on this particular planet were extremely awkward to both find and to get to; I was surprised especially at the species of Tussock on that planet, as normally that stuff is everywhere, but on this planet it only grew at very high altitudes in very inaccessible places in mountains.
I don't think exobiology is boring one whit because of the above adventure, and also because I've basically been concentrating on exobiology since it came out, I feel I have a decent insight of what's involved in the exobiology gameplay. As opposed to downloading a known list of places to go and grabbing all the well-paying out stuff; that's why one could find exobiology boring BTW, because by downloading a list of where to go a player has just removed most of the fun part, which is the random discovery and obtaining the samples; a task which can become quite challenging at times.
So no, I'm not being argumentative for the sake of it at all. I'm feeling just a bit disappointed when some folks say they downloaded a list and exobiology is boring. And then spouting that now it's paying too much. Utter bunk.
This is what happened to the Trade and Exploration ranks. Since they're tied to credit gain, the buffs to payouts over time have also significantly increased your speed in ranking up. Only combat uses an "experience" stat that is completely unrelated to credit gain, so buffs to combat payouts have never really affected the rank progression.
As for the credits... I think it's important to make exobiology able to pay credits in a rate that's balanced to other credit makers out there, and this update has achieved it.
As for the credits... I think it's important to make exobiology able to pay credits in a rate that's balanced to other credit makers out there, and this update has achieved it.
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You'll probably have that 2 billion in credits very soon if you keep doing exobiology with the current figures.
I havent tried it yet please don't kill it before i start, thanks. Ie, keep the high rewards high, thats okay.
What happens if it turns out to be mind numbingly boring?
Also they should have copied the x-rebirth speech minigame if the automated lego force awakens minigame was too hard for elite players.
What happens if it turns out to be mind numbingly boring?
Also they should have copied the x-rebirth speech minigame if the automated lego force awakens minigame was too hard for elite players.
It's far more time consuming and tedious than scanning planets, if the pay out isn't at least better then who in the galaxy is going to want to do it?
Rank scaling should be looked at, but credits wise we already have other mind numbing activities in the game that pay just as much if not more... if people want to scan plants for a living instead of mining , trading or hauling passengers for hours then I don't see the issue.
Rank scaling should be looked at, but credits wise we already have other mind numbing activities in the game that pay just as much if not more... if people want to scan plants for a living instead of mining , trading or hauling passengers for hours then I don't see the issue.
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Fantastic quote, but totally irrelevant in this context. We're playing a game, an entertaintainment, a fantasy.
Most of us, apart from a small highly vocal subset of the user base, don't play games to do tedious busy work, we play to escape tedious busy work and have fun.
Scanning pixels is not hard, it's just mind numbingly tedious grind work.
Lets talk about the gaping holes in the mechanics of searching for exobio signs.
As if, in the 33 century, you wouldn't have the following to do the actual job:
. Drones to search/survey a given area in a mathematiclly proven optimised search pattern of your choosing for objects of interest, plant/animal/mineral++ (ditto for system surveys]
. Scanning tools built into the SRV
. Hand scanners that could handle multiple different sample types at the same time
. Actual use of scanned plants for some other critical crafting use in addition to credits
. [insert here, I'm sure there's more]
Honestly by the 3300s you'd expect probes to have so much resolution that they would just spot every individual plant in sight on the way down.
Only of a certain size. Don't forget life also exists at the micro scale, look at how the mars landers sample for microbes etc.
So a probe could also conceivably release swarms of micro drones (as we're just starting to see now in RL) to do all sorts of things.
I would say that money are ok compared to other activities. I can still earn the same amount faster by just trading between two stations one jump away. That's not to say that whole credit rewards thing hasn't been inflated beyond reason. But this certainly makes exobiology more attractive, even if not more interesting to do.
Obviously ranking has not been adjusted accordingly, but I seriously don't care.
Obviously ranking has not been adjusted accordingly, but I seriously don't care.
It's not making exobiology better though. Just people will tolerate doing it now because they want all the credits.
The whole credit system is borked from the get go. At it's core, it's messed up. Why does an Armetis suit cost more than a Viper MkIII ? Why goes scanning 1 plant equate to more than the cost of a Federal Dropship?
Activities seem to be more centred around players needs and wants.
Rank aside, I can do exobiology for 1 day and be able to afford a Cutter or Corvette (or both!). And that's as a new player on day 1 if I pushed it.
Settlement missions pay out so much less than going out in space to pick up 5t of coffee.
Deliver a package to someone on the ground and you make enough to buy 10 Sidwwinder's or maybe a Cobra MkIII.
Why did the plant scanning get such a crazy buff but not the on-foot missions? Because of time? Pfff, since when have FDev cared about how much time people sink into the game. You can spend hours griding for materials and not make a single credit. As I said, the whole system is screwed and 16.7million for a plant scan isn't helping. The amounts are nice, obviously, and I'll take advantage of it like everyone else. But I dunno, maybe if it was 50% what it is now and the on foot missions buffed in alignment with exobiology.
Please. Have you tried to find logical consistency in Elite? Don't even bother trying. Next you'll start to wonder why ships have max speeds, or why you can't just take a fully loaded Type-10, accelerate to near light speeds and crash it into Earth to literally create a new extinction level event, or why you can die and be instantly teleported from Beagle point back to the bubble, but you need to take an Apex shuttle from one system to another, or why your Class 4 multicannon can't one-shot a human running on the surface of a planet.
Don't try to find logic in Elite, it doesn't exist.
It was pretty internally consistent before 1.3 ish. After that the daily whine posts of "It's too hard to get a 'conda" disappeared and the game went to crap. Coincidence?
+10 and cue "It's a simulation, with 400 billion stars, and it's dangerous" retort from WK's defending ED the way it is, conveniently glossing over valid points like this.
Not to mention the magic space drive. So real. It's realerer than real. But you can't magically teleport, because that would be cheating. Except for when you suicideport, then it's "ok".
Actually the daily whine posts started after that, from the "OMG IT'S TOO EASY NOW IT'S CALLED ELITE DANGEROUS FOR A REASON YOU KNOW THESE KIDS NOW DAYS JUST DON'T HAVE IT IN THEM TO GRIND PROPERLY LAZY SODS WHEN I WERE A LAD WE HAD TO BLAH BLAH BLAH".It was pretty internally consistent before 1.3 ish. After that the daily whine posts of "It's too hard to get a 'conda" disappeared and the game went to crap. Coincidence?
Coincidence?
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