ANNOUNCEMENT Game Balancing

[Darth Ender]

riddle me this : how do you balance a mechanic like mining that requires no real investment to succeed in participating in regardless of the particular thing you're mining or how long you've been playing and thus what capability your ship has ?

The current mechanic is hardest for newbies in the poorest ships. And significantly easier for rich players in much better ships, for any mining material. There's no change in difficulty or risk from mining 1 ton of something to mining 100 tons of that thing.

You can't. Unequivocally, you cannot balance the mechanic without solving that problem. All you'll end up doing is making it unbalanced in a new way.

 

[Screemonster]

Also make murder more effective. Since you can rack up billions in bounties it should have more influence than now really. And close the assault exploit too.

Personally I'd make them as effective as each other, with the same restrictions as each other.
As in, if you kill a wanted ship and gain a bounty voucher, the transaction happens in that system on that day. No saving them up, no cashing them elsewhere.

I'd go a step further and make all transactions more state-reliant for their BGS effects - specifically, transactions that cause a given economic/security state cease to have an influence effect once that state is active. For instance, once you've got a system into lockdown, doing more crimes doesn't work any more. Civil liberty? Playing rent-a-cop no longer helps. Boom/investment? Go ahead and make some fast trade credits, but the BGS effect won't be anywhere near as much as if you'd made the same profit during famine - which is fair enough, since it's more effort to make a profit during a bust.

 

[Sysmon]

Powerplay I can live with. The BGS is a big no. It would single-handedly destroy solo/player groups in one fell swoop.

Now we're talking about balancing. Are you guys going to sort out the ridiculous way wing missions are rewarded, as they make little to no sense.

Hear! Hear! The rewards for wing missions should never have been a straight multiplier. Instead, wing missions should have the rewards divided amongst the participants. Extra rewards for actual presence of multiple commanders in a wing could be a small addition, such as +5% to each commander's share. Or there could be sub-goals that just cannot easily be completed by single players. These could include a bonus for expediency that gradually ticks down the longer it is taking the participant(s) to finish the job.

It will obviously be faster for 2 - whatever number of players to haul n thousands of tonnes of biowaste or destroy 70 or more pirates that it would be for a single player. Reward them for that, not for just being more than one.

S

 

[Oblivion]

While you're at it, is it possible to change the way fighter pilots are paid? Currently they take a fixed percentage of all your earnings which doesn't make much sense.

 

[Henoch]

cqc needs to be split into it's own game and divorced from the elite dangerous game altogether. It has no real purpose in being tied to it.

Instead, there should be a place or two or more where we can goto land and participate in the underground SRV races, stunt tracks and battle royales.

These would be accessible from within the main game and via entering an elevator pad in your srv on the planet's surface. lowering you down into a lobby where you pick your matches / track type. Then periodically they would have championships and the winners get periodic access to certain srv variants and fame in galnet if they break any records.

That would be fun. CQC is a waste of time with a crappy lore reasoning and no redeeming value to the actual game.

I completely disagree, sorry! CQC must stay as an integral part of Elite! This is pure education in proper handling a fast ship. And it is absolutely fair play because everyone has the same chance. You train your skills in combat without loosing ships and much money as it happens in-game with PvP players who very often don't want to fight but simply destroy.

CQC Elite rank ( in combination with the other three Elite ranks) should be combined even closer to the lore of the game: better chance to get in contact with the Dark Wheel and other secrets and special missions. CQC is fun and everything else than "a waste of time" !

 

[Darth Ender]

While you're at it, is it possible to change the way fighter pilots are paid? Currently they take a fixed percentage of all your earnings which doesn't make much sense.

You should get to set the wages, and the amount will impact how well they try to perform given their skill level and what activities you're doing. Taking them into high risk situations but not paying them that much would result in them being obstinate and cowardly, perhaps even refusing to deploy at that pay level. or even better, they just decide to eject into a life pod mid-battle and quit your services.

 

[Darth Ender]

I completely disagree, sorry! CQC must stay as an integral part of Elite! This is pure education in proper handling a fast ship.
...
CQC is fun and everything else than "a waste of time" !

I wish i could convey how funny that all was without resorting to some stupid meme.

Since i can't I'll just say.. Excellent sarcasm.

 

[Jukelo]

Now I agree with the general idea that mining needs a nerf, but I'm curious as to what it is about deep core and SS that involves so much more skill and effort that they should be treated all that differently from laser mining. They're slightly more involved sure, but from a game design pov I would think that only indicates a problem with laser mining (it's uninvolved, aka shallow and boring), not more difficult, which should be a much better criterion for increased payouts. Does shooting fast missiles at asteroids rotating predictably and at such a ponderous pace really all that much more skilled (if that) than just figruing out the rotation axis of an asteroid to avoid the chunks shooting out in every direction when laser mining?

 

[CuriousBlue]

I saw another comment on this earlier in the thread. I'd be concerned about continual bounties placed on players maliciously for reasons outside of the game. What do you think?

I like the Idea of Player vs Player Bounties very much. It generates a much bigger incentive for going to open play.Obviously these bounties can only be fulfilled there.

Other games do have mechanics to facilitate player vs player bounties.
I could think about multiple methods to make this less likely to be abused. From the top of my mind :
1.Player with bounties on their head by other other Player need to be found first by the Headhunter. This could be done by having to track the other player down as a first ste by "asking" around some NPCs at a station or some other NPC ship captains which point the headhunter in the rough direction of the targets player. Something like ...he was last seeen there and there. Npcs being more precise as the headhunter comes close to the target, cumulating in the exact position if arriving near the target. NPC would also indicate if player is online in open at all.
2. Option to only allow bounties on players with notoriety, reduce the notoriety if target was successfully headhunted. Making repeating Bounties unnecessary.
3. Preventing setting Bounties repeatedly on same player, with some kind of timer or diminishing returns.
4 .Only allowing Player A to set a bounty on Player B once if they had some kind of interaction in the recent past, e.g B killed A without being provoked.

I would like to add an Idea into the ring to make Player created missions bsides pure boutnies a possibility, which would also mean credits go 1:1 from the player mission giver to the player mission fulfiller 1:1 with a possible Tax perenctage deducted. Also this could be an open only option ( mission auto-fails if logging in single or private groupt).This would further incentivize open play ( higher risk higher reward).

 

[Speedcuffs]

I completely disagree, sorry! CQC must stay as an integral part of Elite! This is pure education in proper handling a fast ship. And it is absolutely fair play because everyone has the same chance. You train your skills in combat without loosing ships and much money as it happens in-game with PvP players who very often don't want to fight but simply destroy.

CQC Elite rank ( in combination with the other three Elite ranks) should be combined even closer to the lore of the game: better chance to get in contact with the Dark Wheel and other secrets and special missions. CQC is fun and everything else than "a waste of time" !

Quad Elite badge/decal please!

 

[PHOBIA bAE2005k]

While you're at it, is it possible to change the way fighter pilots are paid? Currently they take a fixed percentage of all your earnings which doesn't make much sense.

Regardless of being attached to your ship or not as well.

Side note, Why no changes to the PVE aspect of mining. There is zero risk mining in solo or private because things like pirates who scan you as soon as youve dropped in and are barely close enough to an asteroid to fire your first prospector and wonder why they can't feed their kids or even better, those that try to interdict you where by unless you literally AFK, you can never be interdicted. One hand, with a controller on the desk whilst drinking a coffee with the other hand talking to someone. About as non interactive as I could get without going AFK.

I get the impression from the changes that there is no intention of fixing this as nerfing the credit payout is ∞ly easier. My personal opinion is these changes are not going to stop new players becoming rich or bothering to try and open up other avenues of game play to obtain money.

This btw on top of the fact the PWA isn't being fixed firstly before nerfing payouts. I do find this amusing

 

[Oaktree]

How about Combat Bonds from CZs?
Each ship pays less than a counterpart pirate in a HighRes or HazRes. And the pirates are a lot more squichy than a military vessel.

I think a CZ ship kill should have a higher bond payout.

 

[fus roh potato]

Thanks for the suggestion! For PvP payouts specifically, how would you account for players gaming the system with friends and alt accounts?

1. Make the wanted player pay out 150% of their bounty from their own pocket during rebuy. While that still allows a friend to collect money, it's a net loss between the two while other methods of money transfer (carrier commodities) are more efficient.
2. reduce how fast the bounty grows. Being able to rack up over a billion in a day or two is a little crazy.
3. cap payouts to 150% of the wanted pilot's bank account to prevent exploit, and to something like 200 mil as a general cap (whichever comes first).
4. and split wing payouts evenly so that money isn't being multiplied for exploitation.

There are a lot of ways to bring pvp bonds into play while also minimizing or eliminating exploitation. I think that counts as career balancing to some degree.

 

[Sunleader]

I get that Mining was Overpowered in terms of Money Farming.
But rather than Swinging the Nerf Hammer Wildly. I would really Appreciate it if you would instead first go Forward to Improve the other Methods.

Because right now this Change basicly just Nerfs Mining Income by about 30-50% while not Improving anything of the other Methods.
Which means Mining despite that rather Massive Nerf will still be vastly better than other Methods but will become even more boring and repetitive because there is still no alternatives....

 

[HaggisMuncher69]

Cqc has never worked properly and should be removed from ED completely. There is plenty squads, Inara + Discord organisation for such PVP events. Probably way more fun than sitting in a que and restricted air space with dead zones... Make your own fun and be part of Community events ( Player organised ). As for mining, Well Core or Laser should never be a hugely profitable excercise as to many new players just use it to max out trade rank... Try running commodities and doing your trophies.. 07 Commanders and Enjoy your preferred play styles without hate and judgements to other styles

 

[szymciu07]

ACTIVITY: High Conflict Zones

• high risk +10% (well, because it has harder PvE than medium CZs)
• needs a decent ship +10%
• needs an ok skill +10%

Reward in 1h should be around 325M, an increase of 30% from laser mining

------

ACTIVITY: Thargoid Cyclops

• medium risk +7,5%
• needs an ok ship +7,5%
• needs an ok skill +10%

Reward in 1h should be around 312,5M, an increase of 25% from laser mining

------

ACTIVITY: Thargoid Basilisk

• high risk +10%
• needs an ok ship +7,5%
• needs good skill +15%

Reward in 1h should be around 331,25M, an increase of 32,5% from laser mining

-----

ACTIVITY: Thargoid Medusa

• high risk +10%
• needs a good ship +10%
• needs good skill +15%

Reward in 1h should be around 337,5M, an increase of 35% from laser mining

-----

ACTIVITY: Thargoid Hydra

• very high risk +15%
• needs a very good ship +15%
• needs very good skill +25%

Reward in 1h should be around 387,5M, an increase of 55% from laser mining

PS: some values should be adjusted since for example a Hydra takes a hell long time to solo and all that but the idea is there I guess

This is VERY INACCURATE. I can do 2-4 High Intensity Conflict Zones in a row, but I wont do 4 Cyclopses. A basilisk is beyond my reach because that thing is just plain frickn' murderhobo on steroids. Idea of yours is sadly very very inaccurate :/

 

[Curried-Cat]

Shame trading only got a cursory mention at the start then totally forgotten about in the how changes are to be made. Not all of us want to go in guns or mining lasers blazing.

 

[Northpin]

The more i read the more i'm convinced FD should implement a timer that is counting the minutes spent in game
When it ticks 60 minutes, cling... 100 millions credits added in the bank...
Easiest way to balance things and it would give everyone the ability to do in game whatever they want.


Now, all those being said - i'd wish FD just do their things.
I'd really want to play Frontier's game and not a Community game.

 

[zipline]

Great news, long overdue, just wish you had started with combat rewards.

 

[Sysmon]

How about Combat Bonds from CZs?
Each ship pays less than a counterpart pirate in a HighRes or HazRes. And the pirates are a lot more squichy than a military vessel.

I think a CZ ship kill should have a higher bond payout.

Nah it's war. Life is cheap then. But perhaps some other reward, to set CZ activities more apart from mere bounty hunting. After all, it is not just the cool moustaches that separate bounty hunters from soldiers.

S