Exobiology is broken (payouts/rank)

Au contraire! They buy a steady stream of salty "them creditz those yungsters make are too easy to get and haz ruined ED I tellz ya, RUINED IT. Back when I were a lad" tears, which I use to water the plants on my magical spaceship dashboard with.
or in a more honest and less troll way, some players actually want a sensible and semi plausible economy in the game and think FD caving to the I want it now kind of players (in a way they specifically said they would not do) is a terrible misstep in the game.
it's also self defeating anyway. IF FD had kept a lid on the credit economy maybe they would not have felt the need to create multiple unicorn currencies and everything could have been purchasable with credits.
 
or in a more honest and less troll way, some players actually want a sensible and semi plausible economy in the game and think FD caving to the I want it now kind of players (in a way they specifically said they would not do) is a terrible misstep in the game.
it's also self defeating anyway. IF FD had kept a lid on the credit economy maybe they would not have felt the need to create multiple unicorn currencies and everything could have been purchasable with credits.

Nope, that would/will never happen without a major change in design approach.
It is what it is because they decided to make it like this in the first place, not because those pesky "want it now" kids complained too much.
Blaming it on the players is what is intellectually dishonest, disingenuous, and a cop out.

A proper credit based economy is antithetical to the core ED game design ethos, which is to lock everything behind a skinner box grind wall.
The schizoid approach to credit reward dumping is just another sympton of this, as they don't have any other levers to pull when it comes to ringing pavlovs bell.

They could still implement a proper credit sink marketplace where anything could be purchased, for a price, but that goes against their skinner box philosophy, and I suspect they think it might make their carefully crafted material grind mission/SignalSource/ShootRocks system redundant. I don't think so, they could differentiate it so it offers something unqiue from direct market purchase. They just haven't bothered to think it through. Not sure it could be worse than the mental gymanstics you have to do with the current system anyway.
All the technical elements exist to do it though (market system, brokers etc). They just don't want to do it.

Which is all the more hilarious, that people defend the core grind design as "you just have to play, there is no grind" (when it's the core game mechanic) and also at the same time "ED is a simulation, it's called dangerous for a reason", yet the single biggest element of human society doesn't exist - a proper market based economy where you can buy anything - not just a limited subset for a trading system as another way to make credits (you can't spend) or fulfill clockwork grind CG goals.

Instead, that was off the table to begin with, and so you're left with this beautiful looking gimped skinner box instead. Such wasted potential.
And then they have to implement workarounds to the mission reward system in lieu of that such as Dav's Hope/Hot Jupiter or players have to do silly things like HGE looping because you can't just go and buy what you need with the credits you've earned.

Just think how the game could have progressed within and without the bubble with a proper full market based economy combined with real exploration and player base building instead of this gimped system on rails that it currently is. FC's are "kind of" player bases, but they're really just stations in disguise and constrained by the same design limitations of the current market system. Surface, orbital, or system base construction, even limited for technical design reasons (storage, db, ++), is really needed along with full market capability to craft & trade everything that's available in the game.

The scripted thargoid war is just more of the same. What would happen if players let the bubble burn?
You can't really run anywhere, as players don't have all the tools needed to restart society even at a small scale.

But to their credit, nobody has nailed this yet either. Not NMS, no SC (perpetual alpha), and probably not Starfield either.

Still, they made the best Space Dirt Rally simulator, so there's that! (NMS is ok vehicle wise, but not on the same level as the SRV).
 
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whilst over all I disagree with your premise.... at launch I thought the credit earning worked.pretty well up to and including asp levels of ships, and it only really fell short beyond that, and I absolutely think the 1st 100 - 200 hrs in the game was better balanced and more fun than it is now,. and FD DID cave to a subsection of players complaining.

that said I dont disagree with everything you said and I think you make some valid points.
 
It's irrelevant if "FD DID cave to a subsection of players complaining" because the real issue is bad game design in the first place.
The fact that a small just as highly vocal segment of the player base enjoys masochistic grind skinner box design mechanics speaks for itself in overall player numbers not being what they could be.

That's a business decision on FDev's part to develop it like that.
If they are happy catering to a small player base the revels in that style of play, fine, it is what it is, and if they're happy with the revenue flows based on that then they will stick to their guns and say PO.

But if it doesn't take with the wider market for that game, you can't blame the wider segment of players in that niche for saying it stinks just because it appeals to you personally.
It's bad design based on misreading the market, however niche the segment may be, if it doesn't resonate with the totality of that segement, not just micro niches within it.

No Man's Sky recovered from a bad start(s), though for slightly different reasons (whether you personally like NMS or not doesn't matter, it's a fact).
Listening to users is a tricky balance, needing to maintain your core design vision with the reality of the market segment feedback.
Ultimately it's a business, not a charity.
 
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We could suggest that only a lottery type of reward is rewarded by finding special very rare types of exobilogy, and lessen the general payouts by a significant amount. But the reason for payouts are most likely that the leaders wants something found - fast.

It must be something absolutely amazing.
 
We could suggest that only a lottery type of reward is rewarded by finding special very rare types of exobilogy, and lessen the general payouts by a significant amount. But the reason for payouts are most likely that the leaders wants something found - fast.

It must be something absolutely amazing.

I'm unsure about that. They've done this multiple times in the past with different mechanics, then nerfing them later.
Seems a bit of rando way of moving game progress forward, hoping someone will stumble across "the story trigger" in the dark.
 
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whilst over all I disagree with your premise.... at launch I thought the credit earning worked.pretty well up to and including asp levels of ships, and it only really fell short beyond that, and I absolutely think the 1st 100 - 200 hrs in the game was better balanced and more fun than it is now,. and FD DID cave to a subsection of players complaining.

that said I dont disagree with everything you said and I think you make some valid points.
Yup, Frontier have shot themselves in the foot with the exponential ship prices from the very start. A more linear progression would have been better.

Of course people want to fly an Anaconda one day, it would have taken years to get the ~600 million credits while missions paid like 2k each. People complained and Frontier increased credit rewards again and again. And thanks to the exponential curve, low-mid tier ship progression has completely vanished. 🤷‍♂️
 
Exobiology rank is indeed bugged. After several researches delivered I'm still at zero level on Taxonomist.
Depending on your deliveries, it's not a bug. Your rank is reset at 0% until you reach the new credits for the new rank requirement.
 
I'm unsure about that. They've done this multiple times in the past with different mechanics, then nerfing them later.
Seems a bit of rando way of moving game progress forward, hoping someone will stumble across "the story trigger" in the dark.
I think the characters in the game doesn´t know themselves what to do. But they have hope and suspects there to be some solution to be found. But being NPC´s means they cannot leave their posts. They need IRL human players to help them. They asked Fdevs to help them in this time of dire need.

"Dear Fdev, we are the inhabitants of the bubble in the galaxy in the game. Tell the real life human players that we need help. Use whatever means necessary to get them to explore exobiology and other stuff, because somewhere out there is the solution to our problems."

We must save the bubble. Some extra rewards is perhaps just something we must accept, for now. insert cool inspiring adventurous music
 
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Well, you could get the rewards AND let the bubble burn.
Makes no difference either way, really!

Nothing to spend it on anyway, and the outcome is already determined, the only issue is how they massage themselves into delivering it based on how players interact with it.
 
Well, you could get the rewards AND let the bubble burn.
Makes no difference either way, really!

Nothing to spend it on anyway, and the outcome is already determined, the only issue is how they massage themselves into delivering it based on how players interact with it.
I agree stop scanning space cabbage and buy some guns :D
 
Depending on your deliveries, it's not a bug. Your rank is reset at 0% until you reach the new credits for the new rank requirement.
That's not what I said. The rank changed, started as zero, I deliver a load of new research and it is still at ZERO.
 
That's not what I said. The rank changed, started as zero, I deliver a load of new research and it is still at ZERO.
Its is not zero.. it is a bug yes but the way it was balanced means you would be reset to a subordinate rank if they fixed it properly.
My rank is currently Geneticist 0% and it will stay that way until i catch up... I am worthy of maybe taxonomist at best, so will take a while for my bar to move (it is adding up though behind the scenes.. aparently).
Personally i wish they could just bust me down to my true rank so i can see the progress.. but there we go.
However I think the cash payouts at the moment are just fine. :D


Info here :)
 
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That's not what I said. The rank changed, started as zero, I deliver a load of new research and it is still at ZERO.
XP - 5% old appearance
Old Rank Threshold
----------|--------------------|
New Rank Threshold
-------------------------|--------------------------------------------------|
XP 0% - new appearance

Kapish?
 
Just fix the ranking levels... that's all that's needed as it still doesn't hold a candle to the biggest money spinners (and some exploits)
 
Anybody knows if the full demotion "bug" is still active? Since the "virtual" ranks are probably several ranks below the displayed one, the "promotion" events of those in-between ranks got through for at least 2 users so far, meaning an actual, displayed demotion of your rank on handing in more data. Would be interesting if more people have seen that since the re-scaling. It would be also interesting if the suit cosmetics coming with the ranks get also removed on such demotion events.
 
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