ANNOUNCEMENT Game Balancing

[Fedas]

Or at least reducing the impact of BGS-relevant actions when they happen in PG or Solo? There is almost no personal risk in Solo or PG, so why should it be "worth" the same"?
It must be worth something if a CMDR is brave enough to take the RISK of being spotted by his opponents...

Only if you increase the cost to gankers - their cost is negligible in the open compared to the others, and that's the main problem of the open - the risk/reward is skewed way too much. The main reason why people go solo is because they don't want to lose what they accumulated to a kid with too much time on his hands, who even if he loses, will get no perceptible drawback.

Now, if you'd say make rebuy scale by bounty on the cmdr in question (and scale that bounty by the amount of losses incured)/lose engineered modules/lose access to engineers/modueles/ships etc., then maybe we could get open to what it could be.

And yes, it would change the PvP. But that can be dealt with differently - willing PvP can be run as a contest (upgraded CQ). Piracy, on the other hand, should be a fairly risky proposition, not a no-cost one.

 

[Grimeripe]

I have to question if anyone knows what Balance is.
My opinion is that Balance means equal results between any two or more scales.
Which from my point of view means, What ever Role of Game Play you choose, should have equal results and/or payout, as any other roll in the Game.
So that no matter which activity you choose to follow, the result of an Hour Playing, will reward you with the same Amount of Credit and/or Reward.

This Balance of Time Played for Rewards Gained, should also be brought into all other areas of Game Play, So that a basic value be assigned to time needed to gather or upgrade anything in the Game.
A basic value made, to Balance all Game Play, resulting in equal rewards for time played, therefore cutting the need for Grind and nurfs to artificially bring an illusion of balance.

In order to give all players an Equal Balance, no matter what role they wish to take.

There is one thing there that is very important:

The rewards come in may flavours:

Credits - what everyone is hung up about
reputation - rank, mission payouts
influence - how you affect the BGS
how you incluence power play (command capital, votes etc)
permanent changes in the game (mostly discoveries and mapping, but also some community goals)
special gear - from power play or community goals
engineering materials - from ship mining, missions, srv mining and signal sources

This is extremely obvious when you do missions, as you may have options in the form of goods, engineering materials, influece or reputation instead of pure cash.

If you get the same amount of credits regardless of what you do (except for skill and random chance) , the other rewards will suffer.

 

[Darth Ender]

this is all extremely wishful thinking.

Fdev is not going to alter gameplay or mechanics. They're not going to add to it either to improve it.

All they're discussing and going to do is shift credits around. The end result is going to be no different than it was every other time they've done it. So sit back. Wait for the change. Then go back to exploiting whatever new no-effort method of credit farming is made available.

 

[ubedead]

So is that what all the BLUE COBRA ERRORS are about or should they be considered normal ?

 

[Rinkashikachi]

Or, you have to make mining it dangerous. Not just with npcs. But the environment you do the activity in has to be actively trying to kill you.

That change alone would create a tool to scale income in all game modes and all income mechanics.

Yeah, make mining harder and more dangerous. Right now it is a joke. You get into the asteroid field, some guy spawns out of nowhere, scans your obviously mining but still empty ship and just jumps away. Thats all difficulty. You just have to wait these slow 20 seconds until he comes close and scans you. Space is truly full of dangers, ikr?

 

[Patrick_68000]

A balancing is a good thing before the release of Odyssey in a few months.

Right on, Frontier !

 

[Adel]

Silly numbers for Ax kills

I do hope FDev does not fall for that.

A hydra can be killed in 15 minutes, maybe faster.

I can kill a Cyclops in 5 minutes with a Gauss Challenger, and much faster with a Shard Conda.
I'm not a Pro AX combat pilot - im really a FA On scrub but even for me, it's a risk free activity.
There is more danger for me to fall asleep mining and lose the ship to asteroids then lose it to a Cyclops during an AX fight.

2 millions for a Cyclops feels quite ok-ish. 10 millions is definitely not.

I agree for that, maybe not 10M for a cyclop but a medusa and hydra defnitly need to be more rewarding. With a challenger i kill a cyclop with more than 90hp, but i can't kill a basilisk (the last 2 hearts are a pb for me). It's doable, but still, killing a hydra cannot be performed in 15min without training and it will requires lot of hours of practice (new players won't be able to gain those credits like they did with mining).
What i wanted to point is that the risk vs reward for AX fight is rlly bad for the moment, and while i don't have the perfect numbers for reward, that was just my thought .

 

[Vetinari]

Let's say in 1 hour you should be able to make 250M credits (either if it's a nerf or a buff compared to nowadays, I will just use this as a baseline)

So as a noob I should make 1 A rated Anaconda every hour for basic activity? Why am I doing anything else?

i hope there is a proper lore backup for this, who is paying all this extra money for AX and why exactly? Why hasnt the market bottomed out on Painite and gone up on something else instead keeping it dynamic? As a Trader I dont want to make 25K per ton, I want to carry 10K tons even if the extra cargo space costs money.

If 'feels right for the player' means 250m an hour Im in the wrong game and will have to avoid it as much as possible. Obvious solution is to buff missions based on rak and status and leave the basic prices alone. Optional if you choose the easy money route or not.

 

[Grimeripe]

this is all extremely wishful thinking.

Fdev is not going to alter gameplay or mechanics. They're not going to add to it either to improve it.

All they're discussing and going to do is shift credits around. The end result is going to be no different than it was every other time they've done it. So sit back. Wait for the change. Then go back to exploiting whatever new no-effort method of credit farming is made available.

And it will go the way of the Elite Trader:
Mining was so profitable I got Elite Trader from less than 10 hours of painite mining, and I am not good at it.

With increased payout from bonds, which already is the most efficient way to influence BGS, any other way to influence BGS will be utterly worthless.

You poke a little in one spot, and it has repercusions everywhere.

 

[Darth Ender]

So as a noob I should make 1 A rated Anaconda every hour for basic activity? Why am I doing anything else?

Why indeed... and this is why we'll keep riding this carousel every stupid time fdev tries to "rebalance". They're trying to balance an activity that is the same whether you're a newbie with the needs of veteran skilled players. Where the only hope of differentiating the income rates between the two is capacity.

Without introducing risk and skill to the activity that ties in with rewards, there is no hope of a balance that makes any sense. So why bother?

If you localize the risk and skill and increased reward ... you can service the newbies and the veterans at the same time with the same role. But that's not going to happen.

 

[Oddy-B]

Question:
As low temperature diamonds can be both mined from core and laser mining and with core mining considered a higher skill than laser how will the game differentiate between core mined LTDs and Laser mined LTDs?

 

[Darth Ender]

Core mining is higher skill in the sense that breathing without hyperventilating is higher skill than just breathing willy nilly.

What core mining actually is, is a higher time sink than laser mining. That's what limits your income rate. Not because it's harder.

 

[[VR] Tanais]

It's a pity you're nerfing painite and LTDs but leaving VOs with a high price, that will push miners to focus on VOs. VO mining is a solitary pursuit whereas laser mining makes a good PwP activity.

 

[Grasher21]

So as a noob I should make 1 A rated Anaconda every hour for basic activity? Why am I doing anything else?

i hope there is a proper lore backup for this, who is paying all this extra money for AX and why exactly? Why hasnt the market bottomed out on Painite and gone up on something else instead keeping it dynamic? As a Trader I dont want to make 25K per ton, I want to carry 10K tons even if the extra cargo space costs money.

If 'feels right for the player' means 250m an hour Im in the wrong game and will have to avoid it as much as possible. Obvious solution is to buff missions based on rak and status and leave the basic prices alone. Optional if you choose the easy money route or not.

the principle stands, all those values were based on more or less a good painite nerf, if you wanna nerf even more, do it, but my point here is the difference on how much money you would get per activity per se

if you are still stuck in the 250 M base line, you missed my whole point, the point is increasing / decreasing the right % taking into account the skill, risk etc

 

[M4RTH4]

It's a pity you're nerfing painite and LTDs but leaving VOs with a high price, that will push miners to focus on VOs. VO mining is a solitary pursuit whereas laser mining makes a good PwP activity.

There's going to be no change; they're not touching the distribution method of mining, you have better luck convincing a hobo to give you his freewinder than you do finding a full ton of LTDs.
Painite will still be the way to go.

 

[[VR] CMDR TYRTHEMIS]

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

I’ve done a bit of everything in elite, I’ve gone from bulk trading, to mining, bounty hunting, mercenary work, and fighting the thargoid menace. I actually thought things were mostly okay, except for mining paid a bit too much and AX paid a bit too low. Given that NPCs that can be blown up with ease in bounty hunting regularly give you anywhere from 30,000-200,000ish, I think those nimble Thargoid scouts should be somewhere around 50,000-100,000. I think interceptors should be anywhere from a 1.5x increase to a 3x increase. 2,000,000 for a cyclops seems to be the most egregious offender. 6,000,000 for a basilisk seems closer to what it should be. So maybe 4,000,000 for a cyclops and 8,000,000 for a basilisk? While you guys are at balance changes, I think the best thing you could do for AX combat is make the AX war zones a mostly permanent feature (accessible even if the system isn’t in incursion), I LOVED THEM. It allowed mostly solo players like me the ability to enjoy going up against multiple interceptors with a team. It kind of doesn’t make sense to have systems littered with NHSSs and system security leaving them be. Sorry for the long winded reply, I love this game and I am so glad you guys are considering balance tweaks. cough cough nerf shield tanking slightly cough cough

 

[Mastadon623]

So as a noob I should make 1 A rated Anaconda every hour for basic activity? Why am I doing anything else?

i hope there is a proper lore backup for this, who is paying all this extra money for AX and why exactly? Why hasnt the market bottomed out on Painite and gone up on something else instead keeping it dynamic? As a Trader I dont want to make 25K per ton, I want to carry 10K tons even if the extra cargo space costs money.

If 'feels right for the player' means 250m an hour Im in the wrong game and will have to avoid it as much as possible. Obvious solution is to buff missions based on rak and status and leave the basic prices alone. Optional if you choose the easy money route or not.

Maybe FDEV could add a minimum pilot rank requirement for purchasing certain powerful ships, such as the Anaconda, FDL, or Python? In this way, a new CMDR can't do mining for a couple of days and start flying around an A-rated Conda. This would allow new CMDRs to appreciate the value that the other ships do add to the game and, by the time they unlock these ships, they will more fully appreciate the power these ships bring to the game.

 

[Gleitfrosch]

So Painite will cost now 600,000 max. thats up to 350.000 less than currently, I dont think it will change much in regard of "longevity" of the game.

mining 100 Paninte will give us ~60 millions after the balancing compared to 95 million now (max prices).

An A Rated Cutter costs around 1.4 Billion, that would be 24 mining runs after the patch compared to 15 runs now with 100 Painite per run. the price difference can be compensated in one week.

 

[CMDR Corky the Great]

I expect you'll find a few friends on the forums with that stance.

Quality over quantity.

 

[Darth Ender]

I think they should get rid of credits altogether. players already immediately make credits useless as fast as possible in the game and succeed in days if not hours.

So balancing something players sole purpose when initially playing is to make ineffective (which they can and do), is stupid.

A better "balance" solution would be to more closely tie rewards with the BGS. Forcing players to either find systems willing to reward their preferred activity (something that changes dynamically with the bgs) or to service the same system by doing a variety of activities as they become fulfilled and needed or as the system state changes. The rewards being instead of credits, various materials needed to provide the station for you to synth things that the station produces. With more high cost items in stations perhaps needing pre-requisites from other station types.

This has an added benefit of limiting how rich you can ever be since there are limits to how much materials you can have. This means you can never effectively make this kind of currency ineffective or valueless like credits can be easily made.

You top that off with location based risk and reward due to environmental and npc hazards and ...you might actually start having a game.