FDev: Credit rebalancing incoming, "more reward for higher risk" activities

Nothing about smuggling, sigh.

Fine... fix the mining issues.
As for combat missions, always seem to be constantly fiddled with I doubt that will ever find a happy balance. Too many opinions.
 
I'm not commenting on what they should balance it around.
However, I will add that there is a large segment of players of all genres that can only play 3-6 hours per week, and it is not unreasonable to offer those people a sense of value and making the endgame achievable in a reasonable way. Just because I play 4 hours a day 5 days a week doesn't mean I don't feel for those who cannot put those hours in.

Did you know Fleet Carriers were deliberately introduced for people who had more credits than they knew what to do with? They were specifically introduced for people that have a lot of time to sink into the game. Of course all the people want all the shiny things, so now they get people complaining it takes them too long to acquire the funds for an FC.
So now? They gotta make everyone earn credits faster? Then you get the people again that have a lot of time and therefor now even more credits.
They might just want something to spend them on... See where I'm going with this?
 
How do you play elite then? Is the community pulling you along? The game itself without social media promotes absolutely nothing, no goals, absense, void. You in a ship in a station, thats it.

That's the problem. People get into the game and go "now what?"
You need something to work for. Call it what you want but in game development this is referred to as 'end game,' as defined by the industry itself.

Right now we have had the re-introduction of CGs which although not 'end game' it may be a motivator to get 'better ships,' which is why there are basically difficulty settings for combat zones, which are frequently part of CG (and still pay poo!) Top tier ships such as the Cutter and Vette are endgame (this is where credit balancing starts being brought up), carriers (again, play hours vs achieveability). Playing with others is a huge draw, because this is an MMO...and guess what, instancing and wing is still broken.

And yeah, a lot of us enjoy the community and that is what drags us along. I love teaching new people what to do and how to do it because when they jump in with a goal of say...getting an expensive ship...and then they figure out it will take them a year...then they put the game down.
 

Quick summary:
  • Aware that balancing isn't right
  • Done in stages, continuous
  • Mining first, start next week
  • Combat next, start two weeks later
  • "How much earned per hour, different loops, what risk, what reward, skill required"
  • Core mining should be higher paying than laser mining, as more skilful
  • Mining heavily linked to economy via commodities
  • Galnet narrative driven
  • Combat needs to be buffed, better rewards
  • Wing missions not a focus yet
  • Combat missions, bounties, bonds
  • Conflict zones last
  • Won't be a quick fix, will tweak and check data/feedback
  • It feeling right to the player is what matters
  • Been seeing all the existing feedback, videos etc
  • Balancing is super important, on the agenda and a priority
  • Incremental changes
  • Discussions have been ongoing since after Arthur & Bruce joined FDev
  • Skill and risk more rewarded
  • Bulk sale to change to be fairer, average not minimum
  • Rebalancing will be tied with the ongoing storylines
  • Forum post later this week, roadmapping the rebalancing
  • Implementation over the next weeks
“It feeling right to the players is what matters”. Well, core mining just doesn’t feel right to me, I understand the market needs balancing but you just can’t find many cores now as it is. I think development needs to buff the spawn rate of cores by a bit and see if it FEELS RIGHT TO THE PLAYERS.
 

Quick summary:
  • Aware that balancing isn't right
  • Done in stages, continuous
  • Mining first, start next week
  • Combat next, start two weeks later
  • "How much earned per hour, different loops, what risk, what reward, skill required"
  • Core mining should be higher paying than laser mining, as more skilful
  • Mining heavily linked to economy via commodities
  • Galnet narrative driven
  • Combat needs to be buffed, better rewards
  • Wing missions not a focus yet
  • Combat missions, bounties, bonds
  • Conflict zones last
  • Won't be a quick fix, will tweak and check data/feedback
  • It feeling right to the player is what matters
  • Been seeing all the existing feedback, videos etc
  • Balancing is super important, on the agenda and a priority
  • Incremental changes
  • Discussions have been ongoing since after Arthur & Bruce joined FDev
  • Skill and risk more rewarded
  • Bulk sale to change to be fairer, average not minimum
  • Rebalancing will be tied with the ongoing storylines
  • Forum post later this week, roadmapping the rebalancing
  • Implementation over the next weeks
I really don’t want to see another mining nerf done and I know many players agree with me. I can see making an adjustment to the market but I wouldn’t touch the painite spawn rate. And as for core mining, its spawn rates needs a slight buff imo because you can’t find cores as it is now. Dev needs to take this into consideration because it just doesn’t feel right.
 
Still think risk reward should not be considered among different type of activities.

It's like saying earth-like world are riskier :/

Hope they balance this fine . Tbh they move way more so i'm glad.

Next ,QOL and fix =D
 
That's the problem. People get into the game and go "now what?"
You need something to work for. Call it what you want but in game development this is referred to as 'end game,' as defined by the industry itself.

Right now we have had the re-introduction of CGs which although not 'end game' it may be a motivator to get 'better ships,' which is why there are basically difficulty settings for combat zones, which are frequently part of CG (and still pay poo!) Top tier ships such as the Cutter and Vette are endgame (this is where credit balancing starts being brought up), carriers (again, play hours vs achieveability). Playing with others is a huge draw, because this is an MMO...and guess what, instancing and wing is still broken.

And yeah, a lot of us enjoy the community and that is what drags us along. I love teaching new people what to do and how to do it because when they jump in with a goal of say...getting an expensive ship...and then they figure out it will take them a year...then they put the game down.

Yeah fair enough, if it works for you.

Really? When i first started, the only thing i knew, at all about the game was i wanted an orca. Saw a picture of it on a website and thought it was great. The moment i logged it saw the price tag and wrote it off immediately as being impossible (which of course it wasn't i just didn't know it).

Well, i guess the question is do you want to keep fighting an impossible battle expecting and requesting things that havent been in the game from the start and show no signs of being added ever. I remember thinking all those things too when i was new but turns out its easier to adapt your point of view than expect frontier to add all those video game features that would make it complete.
 
I'm not commenting on what they should balance it around.
However, I will add that there is a large segment of players of all genres that can only play 3-6 hours per week, and it is not unreasonable to offer those people a sense of value and making the endgame achievable in a reasonable way. Just because I play 4 hours a day 5 days a week doesn't mean I don't feel for those who cannot put those hours in.
Well, if that endgame item/elephant in the room is a fleet carrier then I wouldn’t expect a casual player (3-6hr) to get one without several years of work, not at the current price.

You may well find that outrageous, but if it takes a casual player a single year to afford a carrier then it would take them less than two weeks to buy an Anaconda.

Which would mean that yourself and I who play more frequently could afford one after just a few days, much as it is now with borked mining come to think of it...
 
Just in case, yeah the game was better when there was slow ship progression. It forced you to see things that you would never be inclined to do once you've maxxed out. These experiences just aren't there anymore for new players by nature who are given everything in 2-3 weeks.

I genuinely think people missing out is worse than what it was before.

Also its not peoples fault.. its natural consequence of having absolutely no structure. Think about if you've ever attempted a task that was actually a projects duration but without a plan, and expecting it to be done in one afternoon. It ends in frustration and failure. That's exactly what's happened with ship progression. A projects worth of gameplay has been given no structure (standard video game milestones to represent partial completion). So players come in and are frustrated immediately thinking about nothing but the final goal, and the huge gap to get it.

Frontier took the easy way out and just removed the gap, but in no possible way would that be the optimal solution.
 
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I really don’t want to see another mining nerf done and I know many players agree with me. I can see making an adjustment to the market but I wouldn’t touch the painite spawn rate. And as for core mining, its spawn rates needs a slight buff imo because you can’t find cores as it is now. Dev needs to take this into consideration because it just doesn’t feel right.
I’m sure they’ll leave the Painite spawn rate as it is my friend...

...of course, with balance it’ll only be worth 80-100k per ton...

...but your spawn rate will be fine don’t worry.

😈
 
Just in case, yeah the game was better when there was slow ship progression. It forced you to see things that you would never be inclined to do once you've maxxed out. These experiences just aren't there anymore for new players by nature who are given everything in 2-3 weeks.

I genuinely think people missing out is worse than what it was before.

Also its not peoples fault.. its natural consequence of having absolutely no structure. Think about if you've ever attempted a task that was actually a projects duration but without a plan, and expecting it to be done in one afternoon. It ends in frustration and failure. That's exactly what's happened with ship progression. A projects worth of gameplay has been given no structure (standard video game milestones to represent partial completion). So players come in and are frustrated immediately thinking about nothing but the final goal, and the huge gap to get it.

Frontier took the easy way out and just removed the gap, but in no possible way would that be the optimal solution.
Well, the game has to be balanced sufficiently well to permit a new player, joining when Odyssey launches, to be able to purchase every suit, ship, module and complete all of the engineering and rank requirements in a few days, before their attention span collapses and they write a scathing review somewhere on the internet...
 
I'm not commenting on what they should balance it around.
However, I will add that there is a large segment of players of all genres that can only play 3-6 hours per week, and it is not unreasonable to offer those people a sense of value and making the endgame achievable in a reasonable way. Just because I play 4 hours a day 5 days a week doesn't mean I don't feel for those who cannot put those hours in.
What is this end game of which you speak?
I can only play about 3 hours a week don't worry about my value with 6k hours in lol
 
Well, the game has to be balanced sufficiently well to permit a new player, joining when Odyssey launches, to be able to purchase every suit, ship, module and complete all of the engineering and rank requirements in a few days, before their attention span collapses and they write a scathing review somewhere on the internet...

Are you joking? Because i bet frontier was concerned about exactly that as they kept increasing the rewards.

It worked too, because the steam reviews around 2016 did change once they started adding gold rushes. But at what cost.. now they can't do anything about it as that would be taking things away. Unless they were brave.

A complete reset of all the rewards and costs in the game could do it.
 
They will probably "fix" laser mining by making the fragments stay in the asteroid as you shoot them.

Worked a treat for megaship looting.

I wont mention the sheer pointless task that is known as a single hotspot....

And for agony aunt... There are still ltds out there to steal, but the price on the black market is truly depressing for them.
 
flat-out player error as a risk.

That applies to pure combat too.

I think its interesting with trading missions specifically, because you're in a ship that's outfitted for trading but put into a combat scenario. The trading rewards are probably separate, but all these missions have wrinkles when you get interdicted.. the bonus rewards for killing mission targets should be buffed into the millions per ship. This would change the mildly high negative experience of the scripted interdictions into something you might look forward too...
 
Very up for some rebalancing of payouts ... personally I most enjoy combat but am far from “good” at it by what I would imagine most peoples standards. By that, I mean that I see a lot of “it’s so easy to solo wing assassination missions” online which I absolutely CANNOT do but the solo Elite ones are pretty straight forward now that I have decent engineering.

Wouldn’t want missions that artificially pay more for using a rubbish ship ... that makes no sense at all ... the mission givers want a job done so if anything you’d expect them to pay more for experience and a decent ship because there’s a higher chance it’ll be a success.

However, as well as potentially upping payouts for existing missions I think some Solo Double Elite and Triple Elite missions to bridge the gap between current Solo Elite missions and Wing Elite missions would be good. Those could have more heavily engineered targets or “light” wings - eg. 2 or 3 ships rather than the 6 or so that often turn up on the Wing missions.

Agree with the previous comments around AX combat perhaps needing to pay more as well. I quite enjoyed some Scout hunting but the pay vs standard pirates was pitiful!
 
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