ANNOUNCEMENT Game Balancing Pt.2

[Cmdr Slam Dunk]

Thanks for this.

As it seems we are re-balancing these aspects to pay a lot more, will you be re-visiting the prices of equipment and ships, as these will all be attainable very quickly in the game?

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

I may have missed it but will non-combat missions be part of the rebalacing?

 

[Martin Schou]

How can you enforce that?
One can ALWAYS opt to get the freewinder.

Say I rack up said billion bounty, flying a conda.
Now I let myself get killed by a new player to "give" him the money, then I pick a freewinder, and ask my carrier to come and pick me up.
I won't miss the money for the conda, since I'm the one "giving the money away".

IIRC player bounties are capped at 2m or so to avoid an exploit like this already.

I wasn't done with my post, but the point still stands.

And while it's not spelled out in my suggestion, picking the free Sidewinder won't be an option until you've fulfilled your obligation. Alternatively picking the free Sidewinder would result in the game selling off your stuff until the obligation is fulfilled. The point is to ensure that the person with the bounty cannot avoid feeling the pain when dying.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

A well considered piece of feedback - thanks for this!

Hi Bruce. I'm liking all these balance passes. Could we look at wing missions as the way they work doesn't make sense. Wing missions should reward players with a share of the proceeds. Then remove all of the solo versions of those missions as they are now balanced for solo and wings, also add a time bonus. The quicker you do it, the better the bonus.

This would be far more realistic instead of the contract giver giving 2, 3 or 4 times the amount because more people are doing it. Wings would get a time bonus and get it done quicker as there are more people doing them.

This would then give more missions for everyone to do instead of separating out wing missions and solo missions as all of those types of mission will be shareable.

 

[nats]

So instead of reducing the amount of credits available to players they are increasing them? Great. Because this is what the game needs, more credits floating around lol.

But why would anyone bother with combat? Why would anyone actually play the game to raise money when all they have to do is join a fleet carrier group and instantly get free hand outs in gold etc and get any ship they want instantly?

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

We're discussing player bounties internally and considering an increase to the current cap on those. This needs to be decided carefully to avoid exploitation.

I'm hoping the crime and punishment system changes when Odyssey comes out. I really don't want to have two types of bounty, one on my ship and one on myself, as that wouldn't make much sense and could be awkward to keep track of.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

What the hell guys? "Balancing" doesn't just mean "Money" you know. People played this game back when missions only gave maybe a million in rewards max, and they enjoyed it because it was fun and challenging. Back when getting a Big-3 ship was an accomplishment, not a weekend grind. Back when you WANTED a Big-3 ship because they improved the game, not because it was a participation trophy. We don't want >income< balanced. We want the freaking GAME balanced! Remove idiotic "engineering" that turns a 1,000mj shield into a 12,000mj shield! Remove idiotic "lasers" that somehow restore more shield energy then any other weapon can deplete. Do something to make small ships actually useful instead of just a stepping stone to larger ships that you'll be able to afford after one mission. You know, BALANCE THE GAME!.

Wrong thread mate. This is all about credit balancing. Engineers doesn't need to go, it just needs to be tweaked in my view.

 

[Alexymus70]

Thx for the work and the changes, but pls acknowledge a small team still working on mining bugs and stuffs!

 

[Vetinari]

Can you please keep in mind the Powerplay weekly bonus increase with the 'Next Steps' part too, since Powerplay is about combat and conflict?

I.e. change Rank 5 50 million to something like 200 million?

I think PowerPlay has been mentioned as being part of your long term plans for at least three years by now, so I'll remain sceptical until I see something far more concrete.

pure speculation.

End of 2020 - final changes to payouts as in OP, early 2021 Odyssey and patches, mid - late 2021 begin to look at PP properly.

This CM team seem to have the ability to follow through where others havent for whatever reasons and I dont think they make false promises or lead people on, they just say No clear and simple when it is No.

 

[Ydiss]

Thanks, Bruce. Some good changes.

I'd suggest only that CZ massacre missions could use adjusting but this'll do for starters.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

So instead of reducing the amount of credits available to players they are increasing them? Great. Because this is what the game needs, more credits floating around lol.

I'll see how it works first before passing judgement.

But why would anyone bother with combat? Why would anyone actually play the game to raise money when all they have to do is join a fleet carrier group and instantly get free hand outs in gold etc and get any ship they want instantly?

Because it's boring and you don't get that feel of achievement. I suppose bit depends on what you want from the game.

 

[Retropolitan]

I really don't want to have two types of bounty, one on my ship and one on myself, as that wouldn't make much sense and could be awkward to keep track of.

"Sure, it probably sucked to be a worker at that facility when I ran in, murdered everybody, and ran away just before my explosive charges leveled the whole habitat. But man, this bounty bookkeeping is a royal pain!"

 

[Acatalepsy]

We're also increasing the payouts for Massacre and Assassination missions. Several economic factors affect the pay offered, but we expect these to grant around twice as many credits as before. For now, we've opted not to change Wing Massacre Missions following reports of consistently high payouts from these but we remain open to feedback.

While we're talking mission payouts, what about materials? Missions are consistently pretty stingy with materials, taking a huge chunk of your credit winnings for ~5 materials you could get in a single emissions source.

If you could get dozens of mats - and mats of different types (like raw materials) - that would go a long way towards enabling engineering without grinding.

Instead of increasing the mission reward, could you instead lower the kill count for said solo missions?

This, please.

 

[Hellrider]

So, FDEV... Will you also be increasing the XP gained from bounty hunting and killing NPCs accordingly? Currently the grind to Elite Combat is hugely disproportionate compared to the route to Trade and Exploration Elite.
The grind to Combat Elite is not simply a matter of 'getting credits' like trade elite, something easily achieved through mining the most valuable resources, nor is it as easy as simply "making a long exploration to Sag A" and back again to get Elite XP.

Combat Elite is the biggest grind...

This is only rank which require any work and is challenging.
Combat rank show, how fast should be earning explo/trade rank
PS: your "hardest grind" hasn't any purpose other than shiny decal. To engineer you need "only" dangerous, and tbh this engineer doesn't offer valuable upgrades.

 

[Screemonster]

While we're talking mission payouts, what about materials? Missions are consistently pretty stingy with materials, taking a huge chunk of your credit winnings for ~5 materials you could get in a single emissions source.

If you could get dozens of mats - and mats of different types (like raw materials) - that would go a long way towards enabling engineering without grinding.

I'd love to see missions offer material rewards appropriate to the faction state, so if you want military supercapacitors you can hit up a faction at war, or run outbreak missions for pharmaceutical isolators, and so on.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

"Sure, it probably sucked to be a worker at that facility when I ran in, murdered everybody, and ran away just before my explosive charges leveled the whole habitat. But man, this bounty bookkeeping is a royal pain!"

But when I jump into my ship I don't need to worry about it.

Or I go on a killing rampage in a settlement, but nobody's bothered about it because the bounty is on my ship.

What I mean is that having two wouldn't make sense, having just one applied to your ship wouldn't either. Something needs to change.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

[Bounties giving BGS in the system they're earned would] solve a lot of the imbalance of bounties in the BGS right there.

Though it would make it even harder to attack an established system controller, because you'd be on whatever you could KWS up versus their primary bounties, and you already have no trade or exploration options.

I'm not sure what the BGS needs is more entrenchment of controlling factions in any semi-busy system.

Combat Elite is the biggest grind...

The point is that it's supposed to take a while to get to Elite. Nothing actually needs you to be Combat Elite, one fairly marginal engineer requires you to be Dangerous (which is much quicker), everything else is basically happy once you reach Expert, and you can get Combat Elite extremely quickly from Thargoid Scouts if you really need it for something.

(Combat Elite is also a lot quicker than CQC Elite, which I don't think anyone has got in less than 500 hours - but there's got to be some sort of challenge)

Trade and Exploration Elite used to take longer, too (though, still possible in a week if you went flat out to them) but Trade especially hasn't kept pace with the increase in possible trade earnings over the years.

 

[Screemonster]

Though it would make it even harder to attack an established system controller, because you'd be on whatever you could KWS up versus their primary bounties, and you already have no trade or exploration options.

I'm not sure what the BGS needs is more entrenchment of controlling factions in any semi-busy system.

The problem is that at the moment, it's trivial to attack using bounties as soon as you have any system with a decent res site, and do so to attack factions that have no reliable source of bounties themselves. I've seen one faction in particular do it routinely - they have one system that they bounty hunt in, spam expansions from a second low-population system, and once they expand, they drop their bounties in the new system.

(maybe the issue is that bounties in general have far too powerful a BGS effect for the amount of effort expended)

 

[BurglarOfBanff_ff]

How can you enforce that?
One can ALWAYS opt to get the freewinder.

Say I rack up said billion bounty, flying a conda.
Now I let myself get killed by a new player to "give" him the money, then I pick a freewinder, and ask my carrier to come and pick me up.
I won't miss the money for the conda, since I'm the one "giving the money away".

IIRC player bounties are capped at 2m or so to avoid an exploit like this already.

The cap is the amount the one with the bounty paid. If they chose the free Sidewinder and let the fully engineered combat ship go, then you only get the 2M like now. If they rebuy the Anaconda for say 100M, then you get the 100M.
There is no exploit in transferring credits from one player to another. There are easy ways to do that. It's only an exploit if one player gets more than the other loses.

 

[bigcee75]

Nice one Bruce, finally a reason to get back into combat, great news and thanks for listening to the community, long may it continue