ANNOUNCEMENT Game Balancing

[rootsrat]

@Bruce Garrido Considering that you list Mining as a separate core activity, are you planning to introduce a separate mining rank in addition to Combat, Exploration and Trade (and CQC)?

 

[[VR] Orodruin]

There’s been a lot talk about increased AX payouts am not sure if this has been covered but saying AX combat is the hardest and most risky PvE in a elite I think the experience you get from a kill should be increased as well with each interceptor giving you more with bigger thargoids. I don’t think you should gain the same amount of experience towards your combat rank for killing a scout and then get the same for killing a hydra will this be looked at?

A bit off topic, but yes, I would agree that anyone killing a Hydra solo actually should qualify for immediate combat elite.

 

[Rubbernuke]

That will require a bigger PP rework. As is
a) Fortification doesn't really care about solo or open - a few potential rebuys, but a dedicated effort to fortification will always succeed.
b) Undermining on the other hand is doomed to fail the moment you are spotted in doing so => see a).

Speaking of which and getting back on-topic - currently dropped PP cargo has no (black) market value - it would be great to earn some extra credits by sending hatchbreaker limpets at my targets before I kill them. Right now all I get is a bounty and worthless but illegal cargo...

It would require a larger rework, but as an interim stage it might be better than what we have now.

 

[BurglarOfBanff_ff]

As a brand new player (week old), this really makes me want to stop playing.

It is a major challenge to start a game that has been ongoing for years. While I could go on & on about the enormous amount of new player friction that is built into the game, that is a separate topic.

Making enough money to be able to afford to meaningfully participate in various activities is one of many walls new players hit.

The proposed changes would not have a major affect on new players. With painite at 600 it might take another hour to get a Python.

 

[Adel]

It's certainly open for consideration. Let us know how you think AX combat payouts should be adjusted.

For a Hydra, definitly 100M cr reward considering the time and skill needed to do it.
AX fighters are highly skilled by that's not the case of everyone. I'm not a pro nor a noob, but i never killed a basilisk (maybe because i'm a skinflint with heatsinks ).

My suggestions:
Cyclop=10M, Basilisk=20M, Medusa=50M, Hydra=100M. For the scouts, they are currently at 10,000cr. Even the stupid shieldless harmless bot in a hazres give me more reward than a scout, but it takes me 2sec to kill the bot and more than 2min to take down the scout...

For the exploration items (Small and Large Data Cache Surveys) as they are rare to find, pls consider to multiply their prices by 10: Large Data should increase from 200k to 2M which isn't a great increase and won't impact game (as they are rare).

As guardians are a dead civilisation, their items should be more rewarding: multiply by 10 too. A guardian relic would pay 100k and a guardian key 250k or even 500k (don't forget it takes more than 1min to obtain a key and the repetitive process is time-consuming).

Anyway, even if i rage often against you devs about updates completly out of touch, i must admit that this time i'm happy you listened to the community and really hope that the balance will allow us to have activities rewarding DECENTLY instead of being forced to "mine forever". I didn't buy the game to shoot rocks .

And while we are with mining, just my 2 cents: if i can have a decent payout from an activity, i won't waste my time to look for low tritium price but simply buy the full price; More important: i won't exploit the next money maker if i know that i have a secure way to make some when i need it .

Thx for reading.

 

[Darth Ender]

can you make everything that has no risk of loss to the player or requires no real skill or thought free?

Or add risk and obstacles and skill tests to all activities that reward players with credits?

Not just combat changes. But environmental risks and obstacles. Make couriering things across space dangerous in some places, and thus garner a higher reward to reach those places. Make mining in certain places dangerous and certain unique items available only there. Make exploration in certain places dangerous, and exploration data of those places valuable.

etc. Dont just shuffle credits around without changing the underlying mechanic. That's been done over and over and it solves nothing. You might as well just make everything free if that's the plan. It's not like fdev isn't going to implement a get rich quick path ...they always do..and everyone will just exploit that and the rebalance wont matter. Like always.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

As a brand new player (week old), this really makes me want to stop playing.

It is a major challenge to start a game that has been ongoing for years. While I could go on & on about the enormous amount of new player friction that is built into the game, that is a separate topic.

Making enough money to be able to afford to meaningfully participate in various activities is one of many walls new players hit. I get that money has been easy to come by for years & that has caused many of the older players to play in what amounts to a post scarcity society. Where they have so much money, that it means nothing. They can afford to lose ships left, right & center & not blink.

Have the devs stopped caring about getting & retaining new players?
I can promise you that new players will be looking up guides & finding a ton of resources saying that players for years were able to ride a gravy train to money but they won't be able to because devs decided that the money hill needed to be steeper for new players.

Just another new player friction brick on the wall.

The main issue has always been some kind of progression balance. At the moment, it's far too easy for new players to get past the beginning ships (which is a bit of a shame because those are fun) and it takes too long to get the huge modules for the large ships later in the game. I've seen newbies manage to get an Anaconda quite quickly but then get taken apart by PvP'rs because they haven't had time to learn how to fly the ships properly.

 

[mrxtheta]

I say no to the nerfs. I say yes to the buffs. If painite is a problem, then increase time of mining painite by reducing maximum number of painite to mine from single rock.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

That's a tough one as alt accounts might never be "friends" in game so you could rack up a large bounty on one, then have someone claim it, then reciprocate with their alt account. I presume you have no way to tie accounts with all their alts, a unique machine ID generated from the hardware or similar probably violates some rule somewhere. Plus, this doesn't happen if they have multiple physical, or perhaps virtual machines to use.

The easy stuff (to implement)..

1. Rule out bounty payments to people who are, or have been friends within some time frame.
2. Rule out bounty payments for people who have claimed a bounty from that same bounty target within some time frame.
3. Rule out bounty payments for people who have had their own bounty claimed by the bounty target within some time frame.

These will make the process of gaming the system slower and more involved and that might be enough to reduce the occurrence to a low enough number to be satisfactory.

Unfortunately some of those impact legitimate scenarios, particularly #3, as you might be claiming a bounty in vengeance/retribution and this would prevent that, but perhaps revenge is enough?

Even #1 impacts the scenario where people have a falling out, or someone is discovered to be 5th column, etc.

I made similar suggestions here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/finally-sensible-suggestions-on-crime-and-punishment.558605/

 

[leonardofelin]

Personally, I have no problem with mining prices to be nerfed, but I would like to see hotspot yields buffed. There's nothing more frustrating than going to a Painite hotspot and not find a single asteroid with Painite after an hour of mining. This is the stereotypical RNG that Elite has become infamous for over the years. When I go mining, I want to mine, not play "pin the tail prospector limpet on the donkey asteroid."

In Space Engineers, when I find a hotspot, it gives me a very reliable supply of that ore. Now actually finding said hotspots can be a challenge, but when I finally do and get my mining equipment out, I can then focus on mining.

Agreed. I would even take a higher cut in prices as long as yields were better.

LTD was nerfed to the ground in three different ways, all at the same time:

1. Smaller effect near the border of overlaps (making it harder to find efficient overlaps).
2. Smaller hotspot effect in overlaps (this was a spit in the face of the community who worked hard to map all icy rings near the bubble).
3. Shared demand at the station (LTD sales affect the demand for all players).

Just after the FC patch and before all the nerfs in the following weeks, sub-surface mining was really fun - but it was paying too much. A simple cut in sale price would have been a much more controlled fix.

Looking for a long time for cores you want to mine isn't engaging gameplay.

 

[[VR] Orodruin]

Looks like AX will get a huge increase.. Cause now fdev listens to complains... Can not wait to see the next exploit.. 150 million for a hydra , speedyboi for 10 times a cyclops.. Oh yes we can instagib them... And cyclops needs no adjusting.. So a Hydra is 75 times more difficult compared to a cyclops?

If you take into account both the gap in the skill required as well as the time investment in terms of synth materials, the actual fight, and the much higher risk. Then yes. A hydra is easily worth 75 times a clops bond.

What really needs fixing if AX combat becomes viable in terms of credit earnings is the gibbing part.

 

[Darth Ender]

I say no to the nerfs. I say yes to the buffs. If painite is a problem, then increase time of mining painite by reducing maximum number of painite to mine from single rock.

Yes, because if this game needs anything, it's more mindless wastes of time sinks. Why not slow down supercruise too depending on how much is in your hold?

The answer is not to slow players down with ideas that add nothing to gameplay. It's to add gameplay. Additional gameplay would slow players down too, but it would actively engage the player rather than be a total waste of time.

 

[thistle]

Thats a mighty spicy stance there, sir.

Isn't it just.

 

[Deleted member 254766]

I haven't looked at CQC rewards enough to know how it currently works, but I support the notion that it should pay much more than now.

On the interaction between players part, I think it should be fine to simply increase rewards depending on how many players participated in the match. As it becomes more difficult to gather more people "just to game the system". It would also be rewarding to players as matches with more players are more difficult in my experience (it's easier to "gang up" on others). Well, I say this, but I obviously don't want to say that it should be the only factor affecting payout here

I believe CQC should at least pay as much as mid-level bounty hunting (500k-1M per hour roughly) on the low end and as much as high-level conflict zones (5-8M per hour) as I'd argue the challenge to the player hovers in that area.

I'm Elite in CQC, and have earned 16.5 million in 15 months of playing. Even if Frontier DON'T increase credits payout for CQC - I think getting ARX for it, is at least a compromise...

 

[Miko]

Why are the changes on such short notice when you know fine people are trying to offset Carrier upkeep with their own markets? Buying Painite at 715k and selling stock when a viable profitable market allows for it is now written off early next week and those players stand to lose billions from their stock potentially.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Isn't it just.

Robert won't be pleased.

 

[Martin Schou]

Greetings Commanders!

Game balance has been at the heart of many discussions around Elite Dangerous, for a long time, and rightly so. At its core, Elite Dangerous is about blazing your own trail and we want all Commanders to feel fairly rewarded for whichever path they choose.

I was going to go on a long rant about the hyperinflation this game suffers from (in many ways) and put it into the context of PowerPlay, but I'll settle for saying that when PowerPlay started, it would take you about 5 hours of game play to earn the 50 million credit reward at tier 5, and this was massively popular because it was the fastest way of doing so.

Now, if it can't hit around 100 million/hour, most reddit posts will be down voted. That's a 1,000% increase in income in about five and a half years or 52% a year. If you think graphics cards are expensive now ($500 for an RTX 3700), just know that at a similar inflation it'd be $760 12 months from now.

 

[Darth Ender]

I'm Elite in CQC, and have earned 16.5 million in 15 months of playing. Even if Frontier DON'T increase credits payout for CQC - I think getting ARX for it, is at least a compromise...

What's CQC?

 

[Vetinari]

But it doesn't,

Hence my use of the words 'or should', base on what they said in the LS about it, it should and that may be the approach they are taking.

 

[Exeider]

Hence my use of the words 'or should', base on what they said in the LS about it, it should and that may be the approach they are taking.

I sincerely doubt that they are suddenly going to shift to a player run economy at this late date.