David Braben himself has been in many pvp battles.
Latest I saw him getting smashed by the Orca rammers at George Lucas Station...
Frontier literally have no idea how to balance roles (not hyperbole, evidence inside)
- Thread starter Alexander the Grape
- Start date
David Braben himself has been in many pvp battles.
Latest I saw him getting smashed by the Orca rammers at George Lucas Station...
Yes use the right ship for the job. However when it comes to earning credits, the right ship is the one with the most cargo space.
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If you choose to play game from max credits per hour POV, it's your choice. Some professions always will feel more efficient.
It's not just ineffcient, the way the game works ensures its impossible. Bounty Hunting will literally take you weeks/months to afford anything of value once you've made it to a Python or equivalent. It becomes non-viable.
Problem is FDev have pretty much reserved themselves to only communicating through 2 means, the newsletters and/or the Dev updates.
The Dev updates seem to be slowing down (nothing last week) and when they are used the information is like trying to make a rock bleed.
And the newsletters (imo) are a complete waste of time, they just copy/paste the dev update, then chuck in some comms chatter stuff and thats that.
What would be nice is if they, i dunno, communicated a lot more via other ways, like (silly suggestion here) the forums maybe?
I agree with you here. But unless you want to ‘blaze your own trail’ in a stock sidewinder, you need to look to earn credits. I understand that you don’t need to spreadsheet out a credits/hour but if you want to do anything fun in this game, you need credits first. The problem here is unless your ‘own trail’ is to be a trader anyway, to get to the path you want to take, you need to trade grind first, or wait much longer.
The simplest answer is because somebody wants to do something that they currently consider negatively.
For example lets say you would like to try mining in an anaconda, because you love mining. If you do this by mining, it takes 5-10x~ ish (mission scumming dependant) longer to do currently compared to trading. Its all well and good to say "just take 10x longer" but games don't have unlimited longevity, they might suffer a slower rate of income but taking 1000% longer is simply too much.
Balance has become a dirty word because people dislike nerfs, I understand that completely, but those advocating balance here generally don't want the current income paradigm changing, trading and bounty-hunting are almost in the right sort of place at the moment, smuggling, piracy, mining and exploration are not.
The only reason they'd nerf trading/BH is if the base rate of income is higher than their desired expectation, otherwise there is no reason why they'd tweak things up.
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This quote is hilarious he does genuinely say it himself doesn't he.... Do you think he remembers he said that? As if he did they dropped the ball somewhere
The simplest answer is because somebody wants to do something that they currently consider negatively.
For example lets say you would like to try mining in an anaconda, because you love mining. If you do this by mining, it takes 5-10x~ ish (mission scumming dependant) longer to do currently compared to trading. Its all well and good to say "just take 10x longer" but games don't have unlimited longevity, they might suffer a slower rate of income but taking 1000% longer is simply too much.
Balance has become a dirty word because people dislike nerfs, I understand that completely, but those advocating balance here generally don't want the current income paradigm changing, trading and bounty-hunting are almost in the right sort of place at the moment, smuggling, piracy, mining and exploration are not.
The only reason they'd nerf trading/BH is if the base rate of income is higher than their desired expectation, otherwise there is no reason why they'd tweak things up.
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This quote is hilarious he does genuinely say it himself doesn't he.... Do you think he remembers he said that? As if he did they dropped the ball somewhere
Fair enough. I suppose from my own point of view, I've not really noticed the credit "grind". Some days I go sightseeing with the camera in the cockpit, others I'm in the mood for hunting pirates. Occasionally I do missions and then again, sometimes I go bimbling around doing some trading. The idea that one needs to earn as much as another really isn't important - I'm enjoying the ride and in it for the long haul.....
If I wanted to max out money, I would choose a career which is specialized in doing money, not in combat.
Actual rewards are far to high when coming to killing pirates, decent when doing assassination missions.
But when screwing up a mission, I should loose money, not having a bit less reward. I should have to care about doing benefits, but actually money is raining from every corner of the game.
The whole "bounty hunter" feeling is compromised by the feeling I'm a child which is rewarded whatever he does right or wrong so I don't cry.
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The game always works for people with that view, and you guys get the most out of games. I'm half that way, I grinded my backside off to get a python on release for example, then i've never cared about credits since.
Its about if your goal orientated or not, if your happy playing without goals you can just fly around and have fun and the credits are background, but they are background for everything you do playing like that. I wish more players were like that including myself but we just aren't. If you have a goal you need means to achieve that goal, and vast income discrepancy kills the activities you want to do in favour of the ones that earn the highest.
Hi Alexander the Grape,
You make some good points, pity you had to go with such an aggressive subject title. If you want the devs to read your post it can't hurt to be a little polite. Also a subject like yours is in danger of getting your well put argument burried under piles of white knightish responses. Never a good thing. Some responses will often get a thread shut down with that crap. Best to avoid hooking people into writing those types of posts if you want sensible considered responses.
I'm All for More Balancing
As to balancing the trades earning power, I think it's a worthwhile aim, and as you say FDev have done some balancing. Not enough I'd agree. I'm a little biased of course because I personally hate trading so much!
The Issue of Scaling
I think one of the difficult balancing issues is finding a way to make earning power of all trades scale in the same way trading does.
Your potential to earn credits trading is of course directly linked to how many credits you have and that links to how many tonnes of crap you can drag between systems.
How does this scale factor get applied to mining, exploring, piracy and bounty hunting?
Scaling Exploring
You can make more money exploring if you can afford the better equipment I guess, but it's quite a short ladder of advancement involving what, four modules that can be purchased? I'm not that much into exploring myself, but I can't help feeling it needs some real love. It could involve more game play and perhaps require a greater variety of equipment. If that equipment and the earning power it created were tied to the explorers useless empty cargo space, then you might end up with a scaling based on ship size. I'm imaging something beyond the current pattern of hyperspace, hit the bong, fly to good earners and scan. Perhaps some kind of exploration probes that took up cargo space and increase earning potential could address the scale issue? Even more so if there was a range of different quality probes and such like.
Is Mining Improved?
I think this is the angle that Frontier have taken with mining to a degree. The addition of all the different levels of limpet controllers and the fact they use up cargo space is exactly what I've just been proposing for exploring. I've not done much mining. Can anyone who has say whether or not the additions have helped earning potential from mining increase along with your total credits/cargo tonnage? I'd like to know.
Scaling Bounty Hunting and Piracy
Bounty hunting earning potential of course does increase with your ship size and credits, and ability to buy weaponry and scanners. But not by an awful lot. You can effectively max out your earning potential around the vulture point, and certainly you can't get it as high as trading.
Piracy, the eternal runt of the litter, will never scale it's earning potential to tonnage when you can only get 20 cans out of a ship.
There's another thing that I'd like to see thrown into the earning potential mix more, it is already in there to some degree, but I don't know if people consider it as much as I'd like. That is 'risk'.
Take piracy for example, I think it should be a seriously decent earner, but it would be balanced by massive risk. And I mean massive!
Improved piracy gameplay, for example, could involve some interesting planning stages, info gathering, and then the heist with the big payout. It could be something your spend a week planning and putting together and could earn you a similar amount that a low risk trader could make in a week. Something that required you to build contacts with NPCs and leverage those contacts.
Bounty hunting could have similar long term goals, where you need to put in substantial investigatory time and effort into information gathering and tracking until you finally track down that big score you've been chasing for a week.
I loved the missions in FFE where you knew someone would be leaving X station at Y o'clock, then you waited for them to jump, followed them and took them down.
I mean even Sid Meier's Pirates! back in 1987 had more advanced bounty hunting like gameplay and persistent NPCs. You could track people you were searching for from port to port getting closer and closer to find them with each step. The Evil Count was here 10 days ago, next port, 6 days ago and so on, until you caught up with them. You felt you were earning that information simply by speaking to governors and tavern-keepers.
That was 1987 for christ's sake! I'm sure the talented guys at FDev could come up with some spectacular stuff if they had the time.
Dev Priorities
It becomes more and more obvious though that don't have that time, they have difficult priorities and a massive list of desired features. With a varied number of play styles to satisfy it increases that list even more.
Improvements to the core feel like they get de-prioritised against the higher priorities of doing things to bring in new sales.
In some ways I've still not properly started to play Elite: Dangerous because I'm waiting for it to become the game I so desperately dream and hope it will one day be. That love won't last for ever though and at some point, a very sad day it will be too, I'm going to stop paying attention.
Unfortunately the business case for Elite: Dangerous doesn't entirely care about hanging onto everyone that's paid their initial gate fee. As long as some people stay to attract others in then there's a certain amount that can leave and never come back and not really affect the monthly bottom line that much.
The devs may not want to work to the priorities they have to work to, but the economics might be in the driving seat to some degree, sadly to the potential detriment of the game for those of us already playing it.
That's just my opinion of course, I have no insight into how the company works, I'm most likely completely wrong!
Final Note on Number Crunching
It is worth adding Alexander that I spoke to a developer at the launch party who had the job of running earning reports over the database, working out how much commanders were on average making out of the different credit revenue streams. So someone is crunching those numbers. That doesn't explain the very round number balancing you point out.
You make some good points, pity you had to go with such an aggressive subject title. If you want the devs to read your post it can't hurt to be a little polite. Also a subject like yours is in danger of getting your well put argument burried under piles of white knightish responses. Never a good thing. Some responses will often get a thread shut down with that crap. Best to avoid hooking people into writing those types of posts if you want sensible considered responses.
I'm All for More Balancing
As to balancing the trades earning power, I think it's a worthwhile aim, and as you say FDev have done some balancing. Not enough I'd agree. I'm a little biased of course because I personally hate trading so much!
The Issue of Scaling
I think one of the difficult balancing issues is finding a way to make earning power of all trades scale in the same way trading does.
Your potential to earn credits trading is of course directly linked to how many credits you have and that links to how many tonnes of crap you can drag between systems.
How does this scale factor get applied to mining, exploring, piracy and bounty hunting?
Scaling Exploring
You can make more money exploring if you can afford the better equipment I guess, but it's quite a short ladder of advancement involving what, four modules that can be purchased? I'm not that much into exploring myself, but I can't help feeling it needs some real love. It could involve more game play and perhaps require a greater variety of equipment. If that equipment and the earning power it created were tied to the explorers useless empty cargo space, then you might end up with a scaling based on ship size. I'm imaging something beyond the current pattern of hyperspace, hit the bong, fly to good earners and scan. Perhaps some kind of exploration probes that took up cargo space and increase earning potential could address the scale issue? Even more so if there was a range of different quality probes and such like.
Is Mining Improved?
I think this is the angle that Frontier have taken with mining to a degree. The addition of all the different levels of limpet controllers and the fact they use up cargo space is exactly what I've just been proposing for exploring. I've not done much mining. Can anyone who has say whether or not the additions have helped earning potential from mining increase along with your total credits/cargo tonnage? I'd like to know.
Scaling Bounty Hunting and Piracy
Bounty hunting earning potential of course does increase with your ship size and credits, and ability to buy weaponry and scanners. But not by an awful lot. You can effectively max out your earning potential around the vulture point, and certainly you can't get it as high as trading.
Piracy, the eternal runt of the litter, will never scale it's earning potential to tonnage when you can only get 20 cans out of a ship.
There's another thing that I'd like to see thrown into the earning potential mix more, it is already in there to some degree, but I don't know if people consider it as much as I'd like. That is 'risk'.
Take piracy for example, I think it should be a seriously decent earner, but it would be balanced by massive risk. And I mean massive!
Improved piracy gameplay, for example, could involve some interesting planning stages, info gathering, and then the heist with the big payout. It could be something your spend a week planning and putting together and could earn you a similar amount that a low risk trader could make in a week. Something that required you to build contacts with NPCs and leverage those contacts.
Bounty hunting could have similar long term goals, where you need to put in substantial investigatory time and effort into information gathering and tracking until you finally track down that big score you've been chasing for a week.
I loved the missions in FFE where you knew someone would be leaving X station at Y o'clock, then you waited for them to jump, followed them and took them down.
I mean even Sid Meier's Pirates! back in 1987 had more advanced bounty hunting like gameplay and persistent NPCs. You could track people you were searching for from port to port getting closer and closer to find them with each step. The Evil Count was here 10 days ago, next port, 6 days ago and so on, until you caught up with them. You felt you were earning that information simply by speaking to governors and tavern-keepers.
That was 1987 for christ's sake! I'm sure the talented guys at FDev could come up with some spectacular stuff if they had the time.
Dev Priorities
It becomes more and more obvious though that don't have that time, they have difficult priorities and a massive list of desired features. With a varied number of play styles to satisfy it increases that list even more.
Improvements to the core feel like they get de-prioritised against the higher priorities of doing things to bring in new sales.
In some ways I've still not properly started to play Elite: Dangerous because I'm waiting for it to become the game I so desperately dream and hope it will one day be. That love won't last for ever though and at some point, a very sad day it will be too, I'm going to stop paying attention.
Unfortunately the business case for Elite: Dangerous doesn't entirely care about hanging onto everyone that's paid their initial gate fee. As long as some people stay to attract others in then there's a certain amount that can leave and never come back and not really affect the monthly bottom line that much.
The devs may not want to work to the priorities they have to work to, but the economics might be in the driving seat to some degree, sadly to the potential detriment of the game for those of us already playing it.
That's just my opinion of course, I have no insight into how the company works, I'm most likely completely wrong!
Final Note on Number Crunching
It is worth adding Alexander that I spoke to a developer at the launch party who had the job of running earning reports over the database, working out how much commanders were on average making out of the different credit revenue streams. So someone is crunching those numbers. That doesn't explain the very round number balancing you point out.
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From my point of view, we don't.
FD need to encourage traders [not more than they do now, but trading needs to be encouraged over the combat professions] as without plenty of players trading at any given time, how are player pirates going to find someone to interact with? If the number of player pirates decreases because there are not enough player traders to keep pirating a viable profession [all other things equal, which they are not at the moment] then there is not enough to keep the player bounty hunters amused. If all professions were completely 'balanced' then there would be no incentive to trade and things would decline for a large portion of the players. It's a simple cause and effect.
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I don't know what FD could do to improve the 'balance' of the game. Remove too much trading profit, more players will do something else, and a lot of the other professions will suffer. Improve the payouts of the other proffessionstoo much, same result. You could see some improvement by reducing trading profit and increasing mining. Less traders for pirates, more miners, so the overall number of targetable palyers could stay reasonably consistent.
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It's very much like a food chain. Not enough tiddlers to feed the large fish, the large fish starve and diminish in number. Less large fish, and the sharks start to go hungry.
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It seems to me that a lot of people who cry that traders should go solo if they don't like pirating affecting them, should take a broader view of the way they want to play the game unless they are going to be satisfied only being able to pirate NPCs because they can no longer find a player to interact with. There are many reasons to do some trading, just as there are many reasons to be an explorer, pirate, miner, or bounty hunter. But if the enjoyment is not there on some level at least, why would I do it?
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I enjoy the thought of trading in open. It's probably the only time I will meet another person in-game. But if all I meet are people who don't understand basic behaviour, then I won't enjoy the experience and might as well finish off whatever trading I want to do for my purposes in solo, or return to exploration [which I do in Open, but where I have an infinitesimal chance of meeting anyone else]. Unfortunately both those options mean that I won't get the interaction that I would like out of a MMO game, and I might as well go play WoT.
My career path is a Miner, and the changes (small amount) has indeed helped, but more because of speed more than anything with regards to the collector drones. Prospector drones do have a place (but needs more added to them) and imo, this is the only really improvement we have seen to this side of the game. Mining has seen a nerf though, with 'roids now giving having up to 3 possible materials to mine, then yield wasn't actually increased to compensate for this so we actually get less per 'roid now
Yeah, let's talk about different activities, different rewards and different risks.
We don't have to talk about money.
Let's just take MERITS.
If you take 100 powerplay articles and deliver them two jumps from you, you make 100 merit points.
If you risk your ship for your fraction and enter a powerplay battle zone, every single ship you shoot will give you 1 merit point. Repeat: ONE merit point per shootdown. There is not even a difference on what TYPE of ships you shoot. How long will it take to shoot down 100 enemies? The jump will take 5 minutes. The shooting will take over an hour. DESPITE the risks for a pilot to enter a battle and the time it will consume, there is no comparable reward.
So, WHAT exactly is your point? Fact: the imbalance in ED is TREMENDOUS. The decision making process inside FD must be something like "enter any number. We will change it in the future by trial and error." There is no well balanced vision behind these values and numbers that drive the game. "Delivery" is the winning key in every aspect of the game right now. And it's the most boring part of the game at all.
Elite has SO much potential to be a really good game. And as long the community tries to prevent that fun breaking nonprofessional approach FD uses in weighting roles so differently, it is a GOOD community.
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Couldn't have put it better myself +1