Exploration Rank post 2.3 update

[Alex Brentnall]

So this was born from this thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/346704-Elite-Explorer-in-about-5-hours

Where the discussion was around the ease of getting Exploration Elite rank after the 2.3 bonuses as well as Passenger missions from 2.2

I made a comment and have slept on it and think it's worthy of it's own suggestion:

I raised this in the Q&A livestreams. Both in 1.4? and 2.3 exploration profits were raised, with passenger missions as well the Elite rank of Exploration is by a significant margin the easiest to reach. Powerplay Li Yong Rui makes it even easier on a pure exploration route with certain ELW and similar then being worth around 2.4mil credits. That's 67 worlds (not even first discoveries) needed for that.

I personally think the 160m credits profit should either be significantly increased, maybe even doubled. Or adjust the PAX contribution % to the rank. Or make it have multiple requirements such as distance travelled, total bodies scanned, systems visited, km driven etc. Make it a true all around rank requirement.
Similarly combat could be amended to be a requirement of combat zones, bounty vouchers, capital ship routings (for Elite rank) and base assaults. Player kills too maybe although that strikes me as perhaps a step too far.
And trade could have a mining/trading/missions/smuggling element.

I get the whole "play it your way" but to be an "Elite" in a given field I think that should mean you have experience and skill of everything. I wouldn't hire an Elite mechanic to fix my space-ship if all he had ever done is work on cars.


Not sure how others feel about that but personally I wouldn't mind being downgraded a few rank to overhaul it. I'd probably be annoyed with a total reset to zero but if say if my Elite explorer rank dropped to Ranger and said I needed more km driven and more objects scanned then I'd be ok with it. Easy enough for me to then get that experience and re-claim my Elite ranking.

So in short give the higher ranks several checkboxes that need to be fulfilled to rank up so you encompass everything combat/trading/exploration has to offer and not just tied to a single factor like ships killed/profit gained.

The difficulty is:
1) Is it right to make it more specific with the "play it your way" ethos?
2) Retrospectively applying it and dealing with the issue of downranking people (as mentioned in the Q&A)
3) Getting the balance right of the various requirements.
4) Displaying the requirement (or at least what area(s) you need to improve on to rank up).

I'm all for keeping the early ones (maybe up to the 4th/5th rank) simple to profit/kills but after that diversify it. To have this the displaying what people need part is an absolute requirement I'd say as nothing is more frustrating than not knowing how to get to your goal. Don't need the exact details of "Drive 4.81km" but having a "SRV distance covered" as a direction would be what I'd want.

Personally I think if done right it could give a bit of a new life to the ranks and it'd be a good thing but others may disagree.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

The "play my way" argument against the passenger missions nerf is pathetic considering that a players rank is borderline useless in Elite. The only advantage of being elite in exploration is that you'll get better payouts in scanning missions and you'll get access to Shinrarta Dezhra (correct my spelling I never write down the name properly) so in all honesty, not letting people get a rank that isn't of much use super easily because they want it to be that way seems stupid, the elite rank is supposed to be a milestone, after all, if we were all elites then nobody would be elite.