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

[Jmanis]

The thing that worries me is that they’ve left the game out of balance for so long this time that a great many new players are used to the inflated profits.

I fear the nerf hammer won’t be swung hard enough this time. Or worse, that more activities are raised up to match mining’s level, leaving us in some candy land utopia where everything is basically free...

...because one thing they aren’t likely to change is ship/module price.

Yup. FD have taken way too long to address this without taking a reputation hit, no matter how justified the change is.

Mining and it's siblings have been a broken source of income for too long, and form the basis of justifying the 5b pricetag FCs. People will latch onto that hard to argue that FD shouldn't touch anything, along with everyone's favourite excuse "Oh, but some things aren't meant to make money"

Just look at the core mining cloning/dupe bug people exploited for heaps of cash... a lot of people argued that was "normal gameplay" and an unfair nerf, instead of the outright bug that v it was.

 

[Ydiss]

Oh I get it now. This isn't a rage at fixes, it's a rage at imminent current gold rush nerfs (and based on the hilarious logic of real life miners obviously being billionaires haha - perhaps history isn't your strong suit).

That's all gravy. You go right ahead.

 

[Kestrel71]

I would say the same, but I honestly think things have improved when Arthur joined Frontier. I honestly think he's relaying to them what we are discussing where before (no disrespect to Stephen, Paul, Bruce or anyone else at Frontier) we could repeat over and over what we considered wrong and it was like swimming through custard.

What's actually changed? There's been ZERO feedback on bugs that have been sitting in a CONFIRMED state for MONTHS with dozens of pages of people reporting the same issue (for example, the broken PWA, a key tool required by miners). Bugs sit, for months on end, with no communication from FDEV. People talk about issue after issue and there's NEVER any feedback from FDEV -- people don't know if what appears to be a bug is simply a designed change or actually a bug. Patch after broken patch after broken patch and FDEV say nothing - they don't acknowledge the bugs, they don't comment on when further fixes might be available, they don't address people's concerns.

FDEV throw out a message, like this one, with very skimpy details on exactly WHAT is going to happen: they're "making adjustments to mining next week" -- what does that mean??? People with FCs full of, say, painite, have no clue if they've just spent weeks mining several billion credits of painite only to find that it won't be worth half its current value should they wait until post-patch to sell it, so they either rush back to the bubble to sell or take the risk that they're going to lose a significant amount of value. That's game disrupting. Worse, it's IRL disrupting as there are people way out in the black who now need immediately find the time to get back to the bubble to sell or risk having their hard work negated.

Case in point: I've got over 7000 tons of commodities in my carrier right now and I'm out in the black, so I've now got to spend several hours this weekend flying it back to the bubble to sell prior to the new patch because, if history is a teacher, the chances are it will lose a significant part of its value if I sell post-patch. I have a friend who has a significant amount of cargo stored aboard my carrier who won't be able to play before the patch is released (he's a long-distance trucker and will be out of the country) - all his cargo is in my hold - I'm going to have to sell that for him and then find a way to transfer cargo over to him once he gets back to reimburse him his credits.

I've been burned before by the many, many FC patches -- I had over 2000 tons of LTDs worth roughly 3.2B that I had invested time into collecting BECAUSE they were worth that much, only to find them suddenly worth less than 40% of that amount the next day, not due to any in-game mechanic, but to the arbitrary price-nerfing introduced by a patch. Others got hammered far worse: there was someone who had a standing order to buy LTDs at a reasonable price pre-patch, but that price was significantly higher than the best price available post-patch and he ended up with a net loss of 8B credits, again, not because of any game-driven economy change, but a purely arbitrary nerfing of LTD prices in the patch.

 

[Viscera]

Is this gonna mean Exploration rewards are gonna be again.......like in the early years of ED?

Absolutely. You should be doing it for the joy it brings, not to grind credits....

 

[Jmanis]

Absolutely. You should be doing it for the joy it brings, not to grind credits....

That's what people have been telling me i should do whenever i complain about poorly paid activities

"Oh, isn't smuggling just for roleplay??" XD

 

[Viscera]

That's what people have been telling me i should do whenever i complain about poorly paid activities

"Oh, isn't smuggling just for roleplay??" XD

"well it certainly is not for the credits!" comes the reply

 

[Kestrel71]

Most miners don't run mining companies, just like most soldiers and mercenaries don't run armies, sit as members of ruling juntas, or own private contractors. The bottom of the barrel of each are slaves, while the upper crust of each are billionaire directors or rulers of banana republics.

Don't need to produce wealth to become wealthy either. Few of the most wealthy individuals on Earth produce much of anything, and one of the biggest sectors of the modern economy is the financial sector which makes money off other people's money. Of course any real-world analogy would break down at this point when talking about Elite: Dangerous's pseudoeconomy, which is a purely gamist contrivance.

... Demand for many commodities exceeds any and all rational need, and scan data is worth the same no matter how practical it is to actually exploit.

Your analogy doesn't fit E because in E, every miner IS a mining company - none of us work for anyone but ourselves. The equipment is ours, the rings belong to no one, the profits are entirely ours. As for demand exceeding any and all rational need, if we were talking about 7B people on a single planet, yes, you'd be right, but we're talking about trillions of people spread across tens of thousands of worlds. The demand is astronomical and, while supply is, essentially, unlimited (due to the entire galaxy being a source), it still needs to be mined before it can be used.

 

[fus roh potato]

There's no way that combat should pay more than mining. Mining is an activity that produces wealth - mining companies get embarrassingly rich, soldiers do not, nor should they. The payouts for mining are fine where they are. Other activities SHOULD pay more, but all you've done here is decide that combat should, arbitrarily, occupy the slot now taken by mining.

Rocks in space are vastly easy to find, access, and mine. It'd end up being a low-tier method of income, likely lower than trading, as it doesn't require skill, tech, manufacturing, or political leverage. Normally in simulation, things like combat, politics, and competitive tech industries are expected to be most lucrative on the galactic scale, but as you may know, involvement in politics and tech doesn't go much further than RP in Elite's universe.

In some ways, combat might not pay more. Combat is only worth its effectiveness, but if someone is capable of great effectiveness, they'd be likely paid much more to protect or assault for the great benefit of a strong political or industrial power. At times, I've been paid hundreds of millions in shared wing missions to sit and stare at a star for an hour in the event powerplay enemies would show up. Why? Because it was known I was effective at either driving them out, or distracting them long enough for pamplet carriers to get through. Those kind of social relationships are hard to come by, but there's no reason an NPC version of it shouldn't exist.

 

[Jmanis]

The demand is astronomical and, while supply is, essentially, unlimited (due to the entire galaxy being a source), it still needs to be mined

And yet the demand for methane clathrates is even higher (orders of magnitude so), and less fulfilled, yet only fetches ~1,000cr/t. Ergo painite, LTDs, and all the other core minerals which are easier to obtain should pay far less than 1,000cr/t.

 

[Ydiss]

I think it's fine for mining to pay roughly equally as well as the absolute best combat payouts. Just core and subsurface mining mind. Straight up laser mining should be lower in the pecking order.

I guess the same problem rears its head though. Why is the conversation about mining versus combat? Why are fdev apparently only focused on these two features? I understand they are the priority (mining definitely is, it's a mess but at least it's got proper structure to it) but there are so many other areas that could use love in the game. I hope fdev don't forget them.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Money (and scarcity of it) needs to drive gameplay rather than having everyone billionaires and being bored having everything.

 

[Factabulous]

I think it's fine for mining to pay roughly equally as well as the absolute best combat payouts. Just core and subsurface mining mind. Straight up laser mining should be lower in the pecking order.

I guess the same problem rears its head though. Why is the conversation about mining versus combat? Why are fdev apparently only focused on these two features? I understand they are the priority (mining definitely is, it's a mess but at least it's got proper structure to it) but there are so many other areas that could use love in the game. I hope fdev don't forget them.

Because they're just going to fiddle with some numbers. I don't see them announcing any bug fixes etc, so no smuggling fix, no PWS fix (maybe), no Orange Sidewinder removal, no megaship looting. Just <combat>+10%, <mining>-10%.

In many ways I wish they'd kept their months-long silence a few more days and just announced stuff in-game, rather than cause another kerfuffle as people build up their wishes / dooms is preparation for the "bromellite will now attract an additional 10% on the markets" announcement

But anyway - kudos to fdev for starting a rebalance within days of bringing in a load of new players from the Epic store - they say comedy is all about timing

 

[Jmanis]

I think it's fine for mining to pay roughly equally as well as the absolute best combat payouts. Just core and subsurface mining mind. Straight up laser mining should be lower in the pecking order.

I guess the same problem rears its head though. Why is the conversation about mining versus combat? Why are fdev apparently only focused on these two features? I understand they are the priority (mining definitely is, it's a mess but at least it's got proper structure to it) but there are so many other areas that could use love in the game. I hope fdev don't forget them.

I'd suggest mining low- tier items should pay less if done using techniques for high- end mining.

What's missing is a way to spec for "strip mining" style harvesting, which should quickly rake in hundreds of tonnes of the lower tier minerals, but it's useless for the valuable materials (too brutal a method, so it damages the materials). That way, you can forego ability to get the high end materials, in order to rapidly acquire cheaper minerals... this also fixes the broken mining missions with their "2m credits for 45t methane clathrates!" trash.

 

[Nadreck]

I hope they will have a rethink on passive income. I know they've been against it in the past, but they've changed their minds before (e.g. no player storage of commodities, never going to happen etc).

Passive income sources are easier to balance, because Frontier have full control over payout per hour.

It also solves the "nobody ever mines bauxite" credibility problem. Basic raw materials are not profitable enough for a player to mine. But a player-owned robotic miner, or mining company, could do it. Players are like the self-employed individuals who rushed off to the Klondike and started panning for gold, but more common materials are mined by big companies and big machines, not individuals.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Surely though the problem with mining is that you have a supposedly rare minerals that fetches huge amounts seemingly competing with hydrogen for abundance? There is too much of VOs / LTDs in the wild to justify the price they fetch, surely? If it was more scarce then seeing it in transports would drive piracy, make hitting a big score actually an event and mining an actual profession than a ticket to everything. So then the price can go up drastically but its not going to destabilise the rest of the game.

 

[Jukelo]

Activities should pay according to the skill and effort required. There's currently no skill involved in mining, and you're much less involved than in any facet of combat, so it makes sense from a game design perspective that a low skill low effort activity be rewarded less. Ideally mining would be both skill-based and engaging of course so as to justify higher rewards.
You could also have supply and demand feature much more prominently so that overmining on the part of the playerbase lead to some self balancing of the rewards, but that IMO should apply to all activities equally.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Money (and scarcity of it) needs to drive gameplay rather than having everyone billionaires and being bored having everything.

It's far to late for that now - given the number of multiply billionaire CMDRs - and also the price of a Carrier.

All pulling up the ladder now would achieve is annoying new players and those existing players who have not already earned billions.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Activities should pay according to the skill and effort required.

There's no particular skill required to gain any of the Elite ranks - they are effectively measures of time served rather than skill.

.... so to gate earnings behind a skill wall now would likely be poorly received - noting that half of players are at or below median skill.

 

[skananote]

Absolutely. You should be doing it for the joy it brings, not to grind credits....

yeah, I was planning the 5000ly+ trip to unlock Palin. Looking at all this I will probably find the FC going in any direction, was hoping to get some credits on the way but it might not be worth the hassle anymore.. We shall see how badly FDEV will break the game this time...

 

[Rubbernuke]

It's far to late for that now - given the number of multiply billionaire CMDRs - and also the price of a Carrier.

All pulling up the ladder now would achieve is annoying new players and those existing players who have not already earned billions.

True, but keeping it as it is won't fix things either because there is no progression, no sense of achievement, no sense of 'living' in the galaxy. All progression is sideways and leads to nothing.