FD, I implore you, do not bulldoze over our existing gear and upgrades

[Han_Zen]

It does not have to be a 'full axe' or keep everything solution.

Not long after Power Play launched, some of the PP modules were downgraded. FD ran a Galnet on how they made commanders ill.

A similar solution could be done to the engineers. For example could G5 mods be particularly vulnerable to alien manipulation. All G5s would therefor be downgraded to standard G4 and the engineers would stop their practice of applying risky experimental secondary effects and special effects.

I doubt there are many cheated G4 modules flying around.

 

[DNA-Decay]

It does not have to be a 'full axe' or keep everything solution.

Not long after Power Play launched, some of the PP modules were downgraded. FD ran a Galnet on how they made commanders ill.

A similar solution could be done to the engineers. For example could G5 mods be particularly vulnerable to alien manipulation. All G5s would therefor be downgraded to standard G4 and the engineers would stop their practice of applying risky experimental secondary effects and special effects.

I doubt there are many cheated G4 modules flying around.

This ^^

and a decimation.
We get to keep a tenth of what we have.
Two engineers.
Two Thousand systems.
One ship.
The clothes on your back.
The wine in your cargo.
Run to Colonia.
Run to California Nebula.

Then the discovery of an effective bioweapon.
And the retaking of the bubble.

 

[Han_Zen]

This ^^

and a decimation.
We get to keep a tenth of what we have.
Two engineers.
Two Thousand systems.
One ship.
The clothes on your back.
The wine in your cargo.
Run to Colonia.
Run to California Nebula.

Then the discovery of an effective bioweapon.
And the retaking of the bubble.

I like the way you think.

 

[Mephane]

Staying at the top in an evolving and competitive game with PVP in it generally requires a continual time investment (be thankful it's not a continued big money investment too because I've played games like that).

I don't think it's reasonable to think you can get your high level stuff and then sit pretty at the top, able to compete, without much continued work.

Sliders, or level6/7 upgrades, or new modules. All fine.

Again: the issue is not progression and higher gear per se. It's the prospect of direct replacement of old gear and the need to redo engineer mods from scratch (because an existing mod you already is just overwritten). If engineer mods would build on top of each other without RNG, i.e. you do grade 1, then you upgrade grade 1 to grade 2 etc. then it would be fine if FD added grade 6 and higher, because our current grade 5 mods would not be entirely wasted effort, they'd be the foundation for the grade 6 mods.

 

[Mephane]

a think ideally we all would like FD to segregate the cheaters from the legit players and then sort out accordingly. i think the assumption being made is that, due to the lack of complaints ANYWHERE about modules being confiscated that FD are unable to get rid of these items.

1 official statement of "we have identified the cheaters and are going to punish accordingly" means nothing if people do not have faith that the playing field has been made fair. And i do not buy the argument that loads have had their gear taken but are keeping quiet so as not to flag themselves as cheaters..... there would be SOMEONE posting about their gear going missing

* Afaik they received a 30 day ban, so they couldn't even get into the game to check whether they still have the cheated mods.

* I sincerely hope FD is not just going to delete their cheated mods, but all of their upgrades.

 

[Truesilver]

* Afaik they received a 30 day ban, so they couldn't even get into the game to check whether they still have the cheated mods.

* I sincerely hope FD is not just going to delete their cheated mods, but all of their upgrades.

Nah, just spurious trollolo reports and a guy who got briefly banned for something unrelated.

The God Fleets are in game. Nothing has happened.

 

[GreyAreaUK]

Nah, just spurious trollolo reports and a guy who got briefly banned for something unrelated.

The God Fleets are in game. Nothing has happened.

As I posted elsewhere (and this is just wild speculation on my part) but I wonder if there's a legal reason for this. It might be that FDev can't alter a player's game-state without their consent. Which means they'll need to come up with some other solution, which they are hopefully​ thinking about.

 

[Mephane]

As I posted elsewhere (and this is just wild speculation on my part) but I wonder if there's a legal reason for this. It might be that FDev can't alter a player's game-state without their consent. Which means they'll need to come up with some other solution, which they are hopefully​ thinking about.

That would be the first time in an online game where that would be an issue.

 

[Gavin Burke]

I implore you, FD, please do not go down this path. Do not bulldoze over our current gear, invalidating it all with an dreaded MMO style item reset.

But that is how the game works, i.e. you start in Sidewinder with small weapons, you can RNG them but then you step up to viper and need to RNG mediums too, then you step up to Vulture with 2 Large and you have to RNG them too and your small/med and now defunct, then you step up to something that has Huge HP's and again you get a new gun and RNG it. You do grade 3 because you haven't yet unlocked the grade 4/5 RNG, but then you play the game some more, unlock that Engineer and you go visit and do a grade 4 cos you've not got the Mats, so you then go hunt for grade 5 mats flying your ship with your grade 4 Huge HP, then you find it so roll the grade 5

Adding guns that can take down Thargoids as the story actually skips all this increase, increase, increase and just get the guns, RNG if you wanna (if you even can!) and shoot them, once over get your old weapons out of storage with absolutely NOTHING bulldozed by FDev....

Oh and then I decide I don't want Pulse Lasers with MC, maybe I'll try a Huge Beam or PA or Railgun, then guess what - I gotta go RNG that too for efficiency but my old weapons are happily just in storage til I want to use MC again

 

[GreyAreaUK]

That would be the first time in an online game where that would be an issue.

Like I say, wild speculation

 

[StiTch]

First thing I'll say is that were it not for the fact you have some credit in the bank with me as a result of me remembering you aren't a complete clown from previous forum posts, I'd have stopped reading after your first line. Don't burn it all up in one go by doing that again mate.

...

The point is that players who are that anally retentive about it are in fact in a subset. Even amongst players who pay in open and enjoy combat they are in a subset. I know this because min/maxers are in a subset in every game population ever in the history of gaming.

I'll say what I say because I think it's right, not to appease anyone here, or indeed because I believe I need to "save favour" with my superiors. Get off yer high horse chum

As it stands instead of perhaps internally raging at "them darn PvPers", I would invite you to prove that the only people affected by this are a minority of open play combatants/PvPers.

This isn't arguing with min/max at all. Of course that's going to be chased. Most suggestions are simply aimed at fairness and relative consistency in that min/maxing. Many of the suggestions in fact looked towards sliders for easier min maxing, though my own thoughts are simply to remove secondary effects. And yes, a lot of the proposals put forward have been made by the PvP crowd, but being brutally honest, since when were the PvE folks as involved - or to be fair on them, interested in being involved - with in depth combat mechanics? The same thing occurs with mod balancing; making various mods more powerful or less powerful etc. is strongly intended to affect PvE players as much as the PvP field, but a lot of the volunteers for testing and suggestion will be the PvP crowd.

Now unlike that situation, there's been far less complaints from the PvE crowd that the discussion around ironing mods is being had. In fact, since the revealing of the exploit, a lot of the commentary I've seen from PvE folk has been aimed at them citing exploiting gankorz as unfair, that it's not viable or reasonable to expect them to fly in the presence of gankors that exploited for complete killing machines, and that as a result it's either affected their experience with Open to the point of potentially dropping out, or concreted their view that Open should be avoided.

And you know for once in my life I don't think I can blame them for raising the complaint. So in effect, please prove that only a small subset of Open combatants care about this, and - perhaps less possible to prove - that regardless of who has complained about it, that ironing out the discussed kinks wouldn't improve Open and general play regardless.

Again, kudos for enjoying the engineers at present. But I would put forward that people that enjoy them in their current incarnation are in fact closer to being the minority. And those I've seen stating they're just fine have without fail been Solo players; sure, you are welcome to argue that the game can't just be about Open play, but on the same merit you have to accept that you can't write the game as if it were a solo affair. It IS a multiplayer game, and the current system is NOT positive for multiplayer.

 

[Sylow]

As I posted elsewhere (and this is just wild speculation on my part) but I wonder if there's a legal reason for this. It might be that FDev can't alter a player's game-state without their consent. Which means they'll need to come up with some other solution, which they are hopefully​ thinking about.

.
There is no legal reason. People broke the terms of service, the service can and should be terminated.
.
The actual reason is bad business sense. Again and again there are online games where people are extremely short-sighted. All they see is that one person banned is one customer less, so they ban as litttle as possible, find nonsense like shadow-ban (which probably doesn't happen at all, as nobody can tell the difference), etc. So they make sure that not -one- customer is lost. Instead they make sure that -many- customers are lost, because they were honest, did not use exploits and thus ended up getting the stick.
.
It is something i saw happening already in several online games. The logic always was the same, that they did not want to loose a customer, even is he is a foul apple. The result also was always the same, they lost way more customers because of that. But FD really by now conviced me that they have neither the balls nor the business sense necessary to do the right thing and enforce the necessary bans.
.

 

[Adept]

It's only a grind if you see it as a chore and the people who see it as a chore are the ones who chase bigger ships and bigger lasers as their gameplay.

Nonsense. The balance is such that small ships are pretty much useless. Elite doesn't have solid roles for all ships as it should, but most of the stuff is low tier stepping stones that you're supposed to leave behind on your way to the big three, or alternatively to FAS or FdL if you prefer a smaller and faster ship.

I'd love it if a person could meaningfully specialise in flying a stealthy scout or a light fighter, but nothing in the game mechanics and balancing supports that.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Nonsense. The balance is such that small ships are pretty much useless. Elite doesn't have solid roles for all ships as it should, but most of the stuff is low tier stepping stones that you're supposed to leave behind on your way to the big three, or alternatively to FAS or FdL if you prefer a smaller and faster ship.

I'd love it if a person could meaningfully specialise in flying a stealthy scout or a light fighter, but nothing in the game mechanics and balancing supports that.

Some of it = low hanging fruit if you will =
its not even hard to do... surely the code cant be that inflexible so as not to allow specilised missions which come with a specific ship.

 

[Crank Larson]

a think ideally we all would like FD to segregate the cheaters from the legit players and then sort out accordingly. i think the assumption being made is that, due to the lack of complaints ANYWHERE about modules being confiscated that FD are unable to get rid of these items.

Speak for yourself. I couldn't care less about either point, as whether someone else cheats and has an uber ship really has no effect on my game. Absolutely none. For the sake of fairness, yes, the modules should be removed from players that used the exploit. But I suspect that more people don't really care about this than do...

 

[Sole Hunter]

Edit: There have been some misunderstandings where I am aiming with this thread. To clarify: I do not want to have to repeat the RNGineer grind. I have no issues with an item reset that also gets rid of RNGineers in the process. But right now the most likely prospect is that new gear will either come in the form of new mods, new items that we have to reapply the the mods we already use on existing gear, or both.
------------------------------

I am not the only one that fears that the rather vague hints about "new weapons" may either mean more powerful guns, shields etc. than the current ones, higher grade engineer mods than the current ones, or just a special variant of either that specifically works against Thargoids, but is no more powerful against other human ships (or any combination thereof).

I implore you, FD, please do not go down this path. Do not bulldoze over our current gear, invalidating it all with an dreaded MMO style item reset.

There is a way to achieve your goals without invalidating our current gear: new item slots.

While many an MMO likes to add new equipment that replaces existing gear, another common approach is to introduce all new item types that go into all new item slots!

This has many advantages:

• Existing gear keeps its value, the effort we have put into it is not devalued.
• The new gear does not compete with existing gear, but adds on top of it.
• New players do not bypass all the old content and equipment, but face a broader set of things to achieve.
• It is much easier to keep up the game balance when the old items keep their role intact instead of having to rebalance everything from scratch with new, more powerful gear.
• Opening up the new slots can be part of (if not the most significant part) of the effort to acquire the new gear.
• New types of items would naturally lend themselves to new, different types of effects that may not come in the form of damage.
• It might be a good idea to implement these not as slots on the ship, but slots on existing items, like gem sockets in various RPGs.

I have compiled a few examples what these new items may be, all in the form of add-ons that are equipped into new slots on existing modules:

• EMP Jammer. The Thargoids have the ability to completely shut down human ships. With this add-on to the power plant, you can withstand their EMP and keep your reactor going, and thus your ship alive. This could either be a passive effect or something you have to activate in the right moment.
• Bioship Scanner. Thargoids have biological ships that function totally differently from ours. With this add-on to your sensors, we can identify modules and weak spots in the Thargoid ships to attack. (Thargoid ships could even be game-designed so that only those weak spots can be attacked to damage them!)
• FSD Hypermodulator. While we are not able to utilize the advanced hyperspace technology of the Thargoids, with this add-on to the wake scanner it is possible to fly through a Thargoids hyperspace portal intact.
• Hyperdiction Countermeasure. A hyperdiction is not instantaneous, and this add-on to the FSD detects it as soon as it starts, and allows you to counter the effect in a manner similar to supercruise interdiction escapes.
• Meta-Alloys Nanites. Some Thargoid weapons deploy effects similar to how the Unknown Artifacts damage ships and starports. These nanites made out of Meta-Alloys can repair the internal damage caused by these weapons. This is an add-on to the regular AFM unit.
• Quantum Shield Modulator. Thargoids weapons are actually not much more powerful than human weapons in terms of energy, but utilize new quantum effects only recently discovered through research into Thargoid incidents. This add-on to the shield generator utilizes the same effect to protect against Thargoid weapons, preventing them from simply bypassing our shields.

Some of these items may be easier to achieve because they are very fundamental of mounting any form of resistance (i.e. the EMP Jammer - you can't even think of defending or fleeing if your ship is just shut off) and would thus be easier to acquire, while other gear is more advanced and takes a greater effort (of whatever the new grind may be) to get.

P.S.: Once we have add-on slots on the equipment, it might be a good idea to revisit engineer experimental effects; these could be available also in the form of add-on to put into these slots on your guns, thus allowing you to add the effect to an existing weapon, swap out different add-ons (they would function like modules that you can swap, store, transfer etc. in this regard) etc.

Are you insane, if they ever drop, re-design or remove engineers all together it will fix the game once and for good. The engineers was the worst update to ever touch this game. It broke it to the core. I'd rather lose hundred of hours on getting these garbage upgrades for something more balanced that will nourish the end gameplay, add depth and make it far more balanced for everybody.

 

[Mephane]

But that is how the game works, i.e. you start in Sidewinder with small weapons, you can RNG them but then you step up to viper and need to RNG mediums too, then you step up to Vulture with 2 Large and you have to RNG them too and your small/med and now defunct, then you step up to something that has Huge HP's and again you get a new gun and RNG it. You do grade 3 because you haven't yet unlocked the grade 4/5 RNG, but then you play the game some more, unlock that Engineer and you go visit and do a grade 4 cos you've not got the Mats, so you then go hunt for grade 5 mats flying your ship with your grade 4 Huge HP, then you find it so roll the grade 5

This is how the game works if you don't know all the details of how this works, don't plan ahead or don't care about wasting effort. I am an engineer in real life (software dev), I have the mind of an engineer and there is no way I would waste any time on grade 2-4 mods when I can just level up the engineer first and then do grade 5 since the having grade 2-4 does not contribute to the grade 5. It'd be a waste of materials and thus time and effort.

Also, likewise, why would I go and engineer a Sidewinder, or any ship that is essentially (like it or not) but a stepping stone towards one of the actual "endgame" ship? All a waste of time. In WoW (yes, that comparison again) you wouldn't give someone the advice to first get full blue equipment at level 20, enchant it to the maximum and then go on to level higher. No, you'd tell them to forget about gear entirely until they are at whatever is the current max level.

Adding guns that can take down Thargoids as the story actually skips all this increase, increase, increase and just get the guns, RNG if you wanna (if you even can!) and shoot them, once over get your old weapons out of storage with absolutely NOTHING bulldozed by FDev....

While that would be a workable solution to the issues I outlined, I hate the idea of having to switch out my gear all the time (I do like switching gear for experimentation, but not in a "you must swap your weapon for X to proceed here" manner. And this also means you'd have to go out with the express intention of fighting Thargoids, and basically before leaving the station have to decide whether you want to fight (say) pirates or aliens.

 

[Mephane]

It's only a grind if you see it as a chore and the people who see it as a chore are the ones who chase bigger ships and bigger lasers as their gameplay.

To get bigger ships, A-rated gear etc. you need credits. I never saw earning credits as a chore in this game, due to the variety of gameplay and the universality of credits as a currency, this is the opposite of a chore, it is the essence of "play your own way".

Meanwhile, engineers require you to chase RNG (to spawn a USS, ship, rock etc that can yield a material you use) for an RNG chance at the material you need, repeat that to throw them into a lottery (more RNG) that decides whether you are done or have to keep grinding. If even just that final element of RNG, the random stats, were replaced with fixed stats, half of the complaints against engineers would vanish. We'd still be stuck a dull and frustratingly random timesink of material grinding, but at least when we look at our inventory, we can tell "yepp, I got all the materials, time to upgrade my shields" and know you have actually completed your goal.

 

[Truesilver]

Another fact of life is that because of the Godroll exploit known to all the top tier PvP groups operating in the game that dozens or perhaps even a few hundred people had a chance to not only godroll their ships but essentially get their entire ship(s) upgraded to g5 for free, a MASSIVE advantage even without getting "godrolls;" what this means is that while those of us not in the know were grinding out very rare materials and data which limited us to being able to generate a small handful of g5 modules (ever tried to get Todd to apply special effects on an entire suite of guns on an FdL all in one sitting, spending grades after getting a desirable roll on a gun to buy the special effect?) these guys at the top levels of all the major groups (at the very least) were already done with thousands of rolls and were practicing their craft shooting at one another and participating in wing combat.

This advantage not only conferred them with ships and modules that are far and away beyond the means of most "normal" players, it allowed them to practice combat piloting at a 1000 to 1 ratio to the above-mentioned normal players. On top of that, it gave them invaluable insight on how to game the engineering system in terms of what kinds of secondaries were possible.

In other words: Godroll Gate has utterly and completely devalued PvP in Open. Additionally, after the announcement by the ever helpful Nightshady who's group pioneered the cheat and was on top of it for the longest period of time, untold quantities of players from both the ranks of PvP and Pve no doubt had a bash at getting their piece of the pie, further tainting the pool.

PvP and Open has been ruined, and all Fdev has done to date is close the exploit and forever separate the cheats from the legit players.

With the advent of alien tech and new modules, Fdev has a slim chance at recovering the integrity of their game. By making it so the previous top rolls of modules become obsolete with the new tech, we have a chance to start over again basically from scratch.

I personally think that Jason's post above ^^ is one of the most excellent summaries made since this thing went public and I would urge anyone with even the remotest interest in PvP or just fairness and game balance to click on it now and read the whole thing.

However - Jason, I hear ya man, but I will just take issue with you one on thing. I think there is a natural temptation amongst those of us who were not 'early adopters' to become embittered towards our fellow PvP-ers (as set out in the parts of your post I haven't quoted) but I think it would be wrong to give in to that. I personally have not played since this thing went public and may not do so again but I'm not blaming players for that. The PvP groups (or the sections of them that knew) did not make the exploit, they had to decide how to act when they learned of its existence. And the fact is that many groups/players learned incrementally.

In that vein I have just posted in the other thread here ...

I think the calls for punishment are understandable yet wrong. They lack context.

... but as it seems very relevant I will copy pasta, as follows:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I honestly think the way forwards is for Frontier - somehow - to level the playing field and so far as possible attempt to heal the game and the fractures in the community. It's obvious that following the video report of February 2017, Frontier made a serious mistake in letting this thing continue. The player base do not by any means bear all of the blame here.

I think the calls for punishment are understandable yet wrong. They lack context. What has taken place here is the inevitable product of how ED has been developed. That development has led to a firm expectation amongst a section of the player base that it is foolish to handicap yourself by refraining from exploiting, and that you had better play a different game if that’s your thing.

After some 2.5 years of Live, the expectation amongst longstanding Open-world PvP-ers is that Frontier will with each patch introduce a number of gaping holes which they will not fix for months, if ever, even when those are not just identified and reported to them multiple times but even form the basis of videos and complaint threads. And that when (or if) fixed the fix will be prospective only – nobody loses their stuff.

This expectation is not just reasonable it is demonstrably correct. Basically inevitable. Witness:

(A) The Cargo Scan Exploit (2014 to early 2015). This is actually the only exploit, beyond the RNG g1/g5 one, actually worthy of that name. But it infected the very birth of ED’s Open World PvP because – let’s finally admit it – much of the ‘golden age of PvP’ around Leesti in 1.0 to 1.2 was directly funded by the cargo scan exploit, which enabled several PvP groups to amass infinite credits and hence focus entirely on building their skills. All those creds, still in game.

(B) Robigo Money Printing (late 2015 to early 2016). This was certainly not an exploit because Frontier actually supported it, via implementing an in-game system of fines for doing it. Cmdr Sundae of SDC actually put a video guide to it on these forums. Tragi-comically, most users didn’t bother watching his video and replied with non-sequitur posts about smuggling, never even realising that it was a guide to making 50,000,000 creds/hr without leaving the station. All creds, still in game.

(C) Thermal Cascade Bug. Frontier have so far failed to fix or even mention thermal cascade even though it behaves completely inconsistently with their stated objectives. Innumerable posts on subject. Still in game.

(D) Premium Ammo Bug. Took over a year to fix. Why?

(E) Combat Loggers. I’m not talking about the isolated examples here, but the aggressive bottom-feeders with thousands of sidey-kills. All still in game, except for one guy who was also accused of hacking.

(F) RNG g1/g5 exploit. Allegedly reported in Beta 2.1. Definitely reported in February 2017. Definitely video of it provided in February 2017. Nothing happened.

Now, against that history, let’s consider what players were reasonably going to believe.

I’m going to use the example of Smiling Dog Crew here, not for controversy, but because afaik they are the only group to have had the candour to have a senior member actually put a timeline on this thing (it’s been publicly confirmed on reddit that they learned of the RNG exploit in March 2017). What they did with that knowledge is not for me to say. Although I would like to thank them for their constructive proposals about solutions.

But, against the true history of this game, if your whole ED is apex Open-world PvP, what would you do? You know it’s been reported, with video. You didn’t invent it, you just learned of it. You know others have learned of it and are already farming it. You know Frontier have done nothing. You know that Frontier never do anything. You know that everyone always gets to keep their stuff.

Against that backdrop, I’d go so far as to say that your choice would be simple: exploit up, 24/7, production line style, for as long as you can stand it, until your fleet is tip-top, or leave. Because the only things you would feel sure about would be that everyone else will be setting up production lines, and that they will be keeping everything their god roll factory can make, even after the patch – if any – ever comes.

 

[Mephane]

Are you insane, if they ever drop, re-design or remove engineers all together it will fix the game once and for good. The engineers was the worst update to ever touch this game. It broke it to the core. I'd rather lose hundred of hours on getting these garbage upgrades for something more balanced that will nourish the end gameplay, add depth and make it far more balanced for everybody.

I would cheer at the prospect of removing engineers altogether. My worry is more that we have to redo this terrible chore either to mod the new gear again, or to replace our current mods with new, more powerful ones. Like, I have already engineered my shields (and boy did it take many rolls for something that is still even below the theoretical maximum of the sliders, not even exceeding them). I have no desire whatsoever to ever have to go out again and grind for new engineer mods for my shields, the same engineer mods for a new shield generator (or both). Just no.

I have had many breaks from ED to play other games, but I always came back, always kept it installed, up to date, followed news, reddit, forums. If 2.4 asks me to repeat this RNG-upon-RNG-upon-RNG grind again, I might just uninstall and tune out for good, and leave with the lesson that I should never ever again trust any game dev company to not totally screw up their game even if they started just right.