FDev, Have You Lost Control of Your Game?

[VR StarLightPL]

Meaningless? You make me cry Cobra pilot tears
No, seriously: do you really think this is a 'good progression system'? Do you think it was the intention of FD to create all these 'meaningless ship' assets that everyone should just skip on the streamlined path to their profession endgame loadout?

I addressed that somewhere else I think. These ships should have a purpose other than having to be stepping stones, then they suddenly would matter. Anecdotal evidence - I only used Cobra as a taxi in Powerplay. My earlier progression looked like -> Sidey -> almost immediately lucrative easy Cr200 000 surface mission and Viper Mk3, then Viper Mk4 for a looong time, then Vulture, then FAS, then I don't remember, probably Tx ships to grind poo from Sothis to get a cutter. And that was after ~400hrs of the game. Is it a good progression system? IDK, started being boring around the 400hrs mark. Were it not for the powerplay group I would probably quit sooner. Sadly I joined around the dreaded cycle tick 52, which effed up powerplay morale for good.

So in hindsight: both progression systems are shallow and artificially limited, only now it's easier to hop through the hops. You still have to do rank grind for the big 3, and engineer grind for the outfitting.

 

[zimms]

Reminds me of Battlefield servers playing Metro or Operation Locker only with 64 players. From a game designers' perspective borderline broken, those maps were/ are played a lot. It does not make them good, though.
[...]

I'm sure some people genuinely loved these maps and had fun. But I'm also pretty sure a lot of players only played them to ease the perceived grind, since those maps were the fastest way to a lot of unlocks and rewards.

 

[B1rdy]

In all honesty, credits are only a challenge if you want them to be a challenge.

This used to be different, which made you actually think about money and it influenced your choices. Risk vs. reward was actually better back then.

I tinkered with running cargo in the starter area, but courier missions and other missions were enough to get me an Adder where I got a taste for mining. There are no "Triple Hotspots" in the starter area so I set up to try core mining. Alexandrite and Grandinite still paid hella-good and I had a Cobra in no time. Polymer trading was a byproduct on the return trip from where I mined the stuff to where a site told me to go to sell the stuff for a good price. I ran missions to improve my rating to "Ally" and set out. By then I had over 10M in the bank so the 100k "reward" wasn't even a consideration. That took me less than a week as a spanking new player.

I consider this loop one of the most fun in Elite. Where you need to think about how to cope with the game (world). But FDev failed to hold on to this or even implement this consequentially, as you have also noticed.

It's a bit of a shame though because they've spent quite a bit of time to set up a diverse economy of goods, routes, etc... But the game may as well just have 3 or 4 commodities. Everything else is solely there now for grinding missions. Neutronium, Duranium, Tritanium, and Molybdenum anyone?

 

[lysan]

Let me just say... I've never mined anything in this game.

With few exceptions, I play the game I want to play. This clashes with things here and there, but I wouldn't still be playing the game otherwise.

I just mine enough to be able to play the game i want to play, having an inflated bank account is not on top of my list.

 

[Secret Name]

Try to look at this another way.

To accomplish something in ED you need an enormous amount of time.
Not comparable to other games with the same price tag.

Even if we had 1T CR each, there still would be a lot to do.
And I mean A LOT to do. Enough for few wundreds of hours.
Those gold rushes are one of the most enjoyable moments in the game for a lot of players.
Just look at the chat.

I think most of the people that took part in them agree.
Games are supposed to be fun.
And players vs devs is a lot of fun.

"Will they nerf it?"
"How to get there?"
"How to improve it?"
"Is it still working?"
"Aww, sucks. Now to do some other things."

Why do you think we have breaking numbers of players?
New content, player interaction, and gold rushes.
Chat and other players is half of the fun.
Right now I am chilling at the mines.
Why?
Because it's fun.
Fun to give a taxi to a newbie miner.
Fun to exchange info and engage in group puns of the chat.

It would be exactly the same if it was farming mats, killing drones, whatever.
That's why games that were most fun were not "perfectly balanced".
And that was good, even before the internet.


I was in the mines, and there were some miners that did not know about trick with deployed fighter.
And you know what?
No one threw that information in their face. They were enjoying finding 38% laser mined asteroids, and not a single insult was thrown their way.
One player told that he was mining without the trick for 3 days and he felt stupid, and that is also a part of fun.

We were all there, and to get into the "next gold rush" you have to play at least 20 - 50 hours.
You will not know what you are doing before then.
You can be slapped in the face with a way to earn big CRs and not see it.

And that is good.
After few hundred of hours in the game there should be something like a gold rush.
Experienced players achieving "freedom from the grind".

Now we can just mine to enjoy the company.

 

[Mr Dr Diego]

Why?
Because it's fun.

Great post, and agreed! I've got you credits in my balance, a lovely somewhat stocked carrier for my mining operation but it won't always be such a carrier. But all of it has been fun.

Yesterday I teamed up to wing with a few commanders in a pirate activity zone. At one point it was three corvettes and then me in my vulture. We had one drop out that was replaced by a cutter. We tore that crap to shreds. The money was surprisingly higher than I remember when I was doing my lowly high-res zones. I think we made just under 15million for something like 40-50 minutes of straight pirate bashing.

But I still had a bunch of LTDs in my carrier hold I wanted to sell before ending my session. So I asked them if they wouldn't mind escorting me as I dropped it off... in open. I decided to do it in open.

And holy it was a ing blast. Like literally I never want to exchange my mining hauls not in open and not in a wing anymore. We had only a single pirate attempt anything, and to his credit he role played it perfectly. He might have been a bit surprised after interdicting to find three sub-capital ships arrive to check in but he didn't even panic. Did his demands, scanning, and even had the balls to say I was free to go after my wing had already entered the session. I loved it. Hats off to that pirate o7

Most likely he let me go because I had just dropped off a full load, but things could have gotten super exciting if I was loaded up. And I intend to do that as much as possible now. So I'm envisioning putting out job/calls for protection runs now. My wing made 5% commission for this protection which is a great built in auto-pay.

We basically are defining our own mission boards here. If the mission fails, you don't get paid. But if I cash in a full cargo-cutter load like I was doing yesterday, then the payout is substantial. It means that protection and wing escort player-driven missions are now a thing. And they will pay well for not a lot of time investment. My trips to/from station were maybe 10-15 minutes each, and on each unload I was clearing 1.1 billion, so the 5% commission worked out to somewhere in the 60million mark for each of my wing members. So if you think mining is bash-your-head-against-a-wall-boring and don't care to do transport runs yourself, there are other alternatives that are emerging that can pay you at least more decently than the typical mission board stuff.

And it encourages more play in open if this dynamism is present.