ANNOUNCEMENT Game Balancing Pt.2

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Martin Schou said:
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.
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Three? Its getting on to being six years :D

Agony_Aunt said:
Oh dear... sorry Rubbernuke. 2050 confirmed for powerplay update :D
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Powerplay hill is well provisioned so I can wait*

*no I can't wait I want it nhaw!
 

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
Bruce Garrido said:
Solo Combat Missions
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.
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This is great news!


But a suggestion, if I may, about combat missions.
Instead of increasing the mission reward, could you instead lower the kill count for said solo missions?
Killing 80+ targets in bounties or conflict zones takes an extremely long time, several hours sometimes.
I'd personally prefer a lower payout, in exchange for faster missions, so I don't feel trapped in to one activity for several hours.

Or a sliding scale really, so there's options for everyone.
 

JonSatriani

J
Glad to see this, but is halfway through two bounty-focused CGs the right time to launch these changes? Can we at least have a little Galnet article retcon... “Increasing pirate threats to capital ship production, and a lower than expected take-up of bounty offerings from Pilot’s Federation commanders, has led both the Empire and the Federation to drastically increase the value of bounties against pirates in Mandh and Parutis.”
 

Adalphage

A
Bruce Garrido said:
Greetings Commanders,

Last week we posted this announcement about our plans for game balancing. Make sure to give it a read for information on the changes that were implemented last week and an overview of our plans.

A lot has happened in the short amount of time since then. We've collected and analysed your feedback and are happy to confirm that Anti-Xeno combat and Powerplay (the most frequent topics in your replies) will be part of our long term plans as well as many other aspects of Elite Dangerous that were mentioned. On Monday we rolled out the Mining and Trade changes described in the post and made some adjustments which we'll continue to examine and tweak as necessary. For now, they seem to have had the expected impact but your continued feedback is welcome.

This past week we've been discussing and preparing the combat changes described in our previous post. The following changes can be expected later today alongside a GalNet article:

Bounties
Bounties from NPCs will see significant increases from approximately four times as much for the highest paying ones to ten times as much for the lower paying ones. Please note that the number of credits shown immediately in your HUD when you destroy a criminal ship won't display the newly increased amounts. This will need to wait until we're certain of the final numbers. Accurate bounty figures can be found in the Transactions tab in your left panel.

Solo Combat Missions
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.

For both Bounties and Solo Combat Missions, the changes will be carefully examined throughout the following days and weeks to review their effects and allows time for feedback.

Next Steps
Next, we'd like to carry out plans to improve the pay from other elements of Combat, including Combat Bonds and Anti-Xeno combat. More information on these can be expected soon in a post similar to this one. The changes are likely to happen before the end of this year and are likely to be the final ones before 2021 where we'll continue by moving onto other areas of gameplay.

Thanks as always for your support and feedback!

o7
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Now we are talking. Keep the good work FDev! A good balanced game will improve the Elite experience a lot. Many thanks for the well detailed info, Bruce.

This is the way o7
 

willisit

willisit
Good stuff; bounties used to be much better, so this is welcome. I needed an excuse to go hunting (I'm only doing AX at the moment... so also looking forward to that too)
 

AlSki

AlSki
alski said:
I'm a bit early but... the Combat missions for Wars are currently all "kill x of y faction" and once you get to Elite combat rank they become more of a time constraint than a skill constraint. e.g. Kill 90 of xyz faction for 9million, instead of kill 1 of xyz for 100,000

This might work when you many hours to burn, but when you juggle work, a family and a BGS, its less feasible.

Is there any chance you could look at this as part of combat reward balancing?
Maybe 90 kills over 3 days, or 9 missions of 10 kills with 1/9 the reward (Cr, Inf and Rep)?
Maybe it could be that the combat rank has to scale e.g. 9 Kills of at least Deadly status, 9 Kills of Spec Ops?

Thanks
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Allow me just to brings this to the correct thread now.. Looks like I'm not the only one asking for this.

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead said:
Killing 80+ targets in bounties or conflict zones takes an extremely long time, several hours sometimes.
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Yes, you can complete a Medium CZ in about 6 ships. 1 Starter, then the four Spec Ops, then a large one to close it off.
Which makes 90 Ships about 15 Combat zones....
 

Kavendish T.

K
Greetings FD. only one wish: when balancing payments for a particular type of activity - take into account the players' real-time costs. even the simplest data delivery mission can take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes of real time. destroy 50 ships in the conflict zone, it can take more than an hour (I note separately that the scenarios for the destruction of enemy correspondents, special wings, the expulsion of a capital ship takes a lot of time, but these actions are not counted in the combat mission, therefore the players' real time is wasted). Don't let play go from being a pleasant time to a burdensome routine.
 

Anikitos Monomaxos

A
Bruce Garrido said:
Greetings Commanders,

Last week we posted this announcement about our plans for game balancing. Make sure to give it a read for information on the changes that were implemented last week and an overview of our plans.

A lot has happened in the short amount of time since then. We've collected and analysed your feedback and are happy to confirm that Anti-Xeno combat and Powerplay (the most frequent topics in your replies) will be part of our long term plans as well as many other aspects of Elite Dangerous that were mentioned. On Monday we rolled out the Mining and Trade changes described in the post and made some adjustments which we'll continue to examine and tweak as necessary. For now, they seem to have had the expected impact but your continued feedback is welcome.

This past week we've been discussing and preparing the combat changes described in our previous post. The following changes can be expected later today alongside a GalNet article:

Bounties
Bounties from NPCs will see significant increases from approximately four times as much for the highest paying ones to ten times as much for the lower paying ones. Please note that the number of credits shown immediately in your HUD when you destroy a criminal ship won't display the newly increased amounts. This will need to wait until we're certain of the final numbers. Accurate bounty figures can be found in the Transactions tab in your left panel.

Solo Combat Missions
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.

For both Bounties and Solo Combat Missions, the changes will be carefully examined throughout the following days and weeks to review their effects and allows time for feedback.

Next Steps
Next, we'd like to carry out plans to improve the pay from other elements of Combat, including Combat Bonds and Anti-Xeno combat. More information on these can be expected soon in a post similar to this one. The changes are likely to happen before the end of this year and are likely to be the final ones before 2021 where we'll continue by moving onto other areas of gameplay.

Thanks as always for your support and feedback!

o7
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That is a good change. Combat path felt disadvantaged in terms of payout towards effort
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
IMHO, bounty "farming" should get less of a buff than bounty HUNTING. In other words, just shooting endless waves of pirates in a RES should be less lucrative than accepting pirate assassination missions. Because let's face it, there is very little effort in farming a RES once you have an engineered combat ship (I would argue it takes more effort to mine). At least with assassination missions, there is the effort in hunting down your target, and you don't get endless waves of targets coming in and saying, "Please shoot me!" like you do in a RES.

This is just my opinion, and not one I'm going to lose sleep over if I'm ignored. 🤷
 

DragoCubX

DragoCubX
Great news, sounds good to me so far. As long as solo massacre missions aren't suddenly double or more in payout vs. wing massacre missions, it should work out nicely.

Bruce Garrido said:
Please note that the number of credits shown immediately in your HUD when you destroy a criminal ship won't display the newly increased amounts. This will need to wait until we're certain of the final numbers. Accurate bounty figures can be found in the Transactions tab in your left panel.
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I find this tidbit weird. So that means the number displayed on the HUD upon the kill is not just directly the sum of the target's bounty? There's probably a reason for this, but I don't get the logic behind it :D
No one here would happen to have guesses why it works this way by any chance? :unsure:
 

Maymo

Maymo
I’m curious, is there any talk about having combat missions award points towards overall combat rank?

If a player succeeds in assassinating a deadly Corvette and his minions you would have thought that would be reflected in the reward when handing in the completed combat mission...
 
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