ANNOUNCEMENT Game Balancing
A league system with official rankings for cqc could do wonders, people like to compete and also show how good there are.
Well, I suppose I asked for that - due to just posting a comment without adding anything meaningful to the issue. I apologise, I was tired.
Let me try again.
When Powerplay first launched I pledged to Denton Patreus, and began the long learning curve to playing a power properly, daily - I would log onto the forum and go to the player ran section for Denton to find the current goals for that week, and working with the forum community - played those goals.
Due to real life issues - my time with elite faded and after six or seven months I had stopped playing. I recently started playing again and this time joined Aisling Duval and was quite surprised that nothing has changed since powerplay was launched.
There are issues that need addressing, one of these is having to pay to support your power in a meaningful way (one of rubbernukes favourites), the modules that non-powerplay users exploit - often causing more problems for the supporters, as they don't actually know what they are doing and finally the whole experience pays badly. Though I never played it for the credits.
I did / do all of this from solo, working with the community in solo, as I'm not a fan of PvP in the main game, despite the fact I really like CQC. I do truly believe that locking the whole mode behind open would be a bad idea, offer better incentives for open, yes - or slightly reduce the impact of solo players but don't lock it behind a wall.
That's it really - these are just my thoughts on the matter, I don't speak for anyone else.
With your much appreciated update to the open queue, in theory the player numbers should have risen for CQC and minimize the opportunity to get a perfect rigged game.
My first thought would be to look at the minimum match time, one would need to perfectly win a CQC match if all components were perfect. Use that as a baseline for Money per Hour. And set it to I don't know 1 Million per hour. Compared to other activites such as mining or new combat it would be pitiful to exploit, while a match taking around 15 minutes or so would award 250k to the winner and maybe a third and half of that to the runups. I don't have numbers here but you probably have and should be able to adjust accordingly.
As an alternative or bonus, just setup an automated tournament system with a leauge for the different timezones and days. So maybe a Sunday and Thursday League accomadating the US and EU timezone. Runtime is 4 matches per play date and the fourth round should always be an 1v1 with maybe an extended match timer/objective limit.
Example: 120 Players enter a tournament.
Round 1/4: 10 Deathmatches á 12 players. We take the top 3 and gain 30 competitors for the next round.
Round 2/4: 5 Deatchmatches á 6 Players. We take top 2 and have 10 competitors
Round 3/4: 1 death match with 10 players. We take top 2.
Round 4/4: 1 Death Match with 2 players. Maybe double required points to increase length of match.
Final ranking: Winner of 4th round, loser of 4th round. 3rd place in 3 round.
Make a pot based on players in all matches per round (this way you cannot just rig it for money if noone bothers with a tournament but you and a few friends). So 120 Players, 30 Players, 10 Players, 2 Players for a total of 162, if noone leaves the tournament early. Slap some sort of modifer on this either a flat amount or take the individual CQC rank of each player into account make a pot. One half is split somehow between first 3 places, the rest is split between other participants based on order on leaderboards.
And finally keep a global leader board with an Elo Like system that resets in the same cycle as Squadron leaderboards just for extra shinies.
I mean there are 2 types of PVP in elite: Illegal Murder and the option for Sportsmanship Competition by having everyone turn off "report crimes against me".
The rewards for killing an Illegal Murderer should be Zero or Negative sum for both participants. Part of the bounty is used to subsides insurance fees, before being awarded to the killer. You should still be able to make money as a Bounty Hunter, but applying a tax on unchained player bounty rewards would disincentive players from abusing it for money transfer since part of the exchanged money is fee'd away.
While being able to operate some competitive PVP with rewards generated by the game would be nice, that is probably a discussion for another day. Maybe after a proof of concept would be implemented and tested for the CQC enviorment.
I don't understand why mining will be nerfed again because FDev already ruined this activity in a previous update:
We can only mine Painite.
If the Painite price is low, Commanders will stop this activity and so frustrated that they will probably uninstall the game too instead of changing activity.
Stop to nerfing mining and improve other activities (Combat, Trading and Exploration).
Also fix your bugs: PWA and Overlapping Hotspots.
That is what Commanders are asking to FDev.
So let me laugh when you say:
And now this will be even worse!
This forum and the issue tracker are just tools to let players dream that their feedback will be heard by FDev.
- Pulse Wave Analyzer is not working correctly anymore https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/19374
- Overlapping Hotspots give 0 Core on Asteroids (during 1 hour of mining!)
We can only mine Painite.
If the Painite price is low, Commanders will stop this activity and so frustrated that they will probably uninstall the game too instead of changing activity.
Stop to nerfing mining and improve other activities (Combat, Trading and Exploration).
Also fix your bugs: PWA and Overlapping Hotspots.
That is what Commanders are asking to FDev.
So let me laugh when you say:
You already ruined the game because you forgot to spend time observing our previous feedback.
And now this will be even worse!
This forum and the issue tracker are just tools to let players dream that their feedback will be heard by FDev.
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Four players, buy 400t Tritium each at 40k/tonne, cost 16 million ... get paid 50 million (net 34 million) for a single large ship trip each?What I really dont like are these types of source missions.
Please do something to fix these.
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It's a high payout, but it's not as if they show up frequently enough to keep taking them continuously, is it?
(Buying at a 4k/tonne source it'd even be profitable done solo, of course)
If I may throw in my 2 cents to this issue:
It is notoriously hard to track a player in Elite Dangerous. Placing a repeated bounty one someones head would at best simply force them out of their bubble of current operation. That could be mining ring, a Community Goal, the target of PP or BGS. In short it would discourage and or disrupt the current Activity of a player. In most cases and how BGS/PP/CGs all activites somehow affect other players. Selling mined goods reduces the price, CG migth have some cool rewards people bicker over, PowerPlay is inherently PVP. If you work for or against a Minor Faction and manage to of a player so much they want to place a bounty on their head, that BGS is usually also being played on a GvG, PvG or PvP level.
Overall it appears that all the situations where a bounty could be even enforced outside of a lucky chance encounter, are legimitate uses of bounties. And I hope you can already see what beautiful emergent gameplay the above situations offer to the various aspects such as PP, Minor Faction Struggle, Market Manipulation, etc.
One might argue that a Player placed bounty could also justify an increase of NPC's trying to interdict the player, but seeing how even a fresh CMDR without missions or cargo is regulary interdicted by NPC's an increase in such encounters would barely be noticeable.
To avoid money exchange add a tax to any custom bounty like 25%. Also don't allow for custom labels to be applied to bounties to reduce harrasment like: "Kill him because CMDR XY is a [insert hurtful slur/label here]".
Finally you might add a weekly limit on custom bounties on a players head. So a CMDR could at most have X ammount of Credits placed upon their heads per Week. That would further reduce credit transfer, reduce the use for malicous purposes and would still force the one putting bounties on someones head to eventually do some work by themselves and not pay to have their opposition in PP, BGS, etc. vanquished.
On the side note of tracking CMDR. That would actually be a cool idea, if you could pay at a station to get the last 24 hours of traffic listed and then pay a bit extra to learn about any Engineering, Completed Mission or Trade Interactions of a particular visit. Could also be used to spice up Bounty Hunter Missions by having records for NPC's show up during a mission, forcing the player to piece together their flight path instead of just getting a time and place to be at.
My apologies in advance for not reading through all 29 pages of posts on this topic before adding this suggestion, but I just wanted to put this out there as a question for Frontier, if it has not already been raised ...
Has any consideration been made for introducing other reward systems as an alternative to Credits? Because it seems to me that some of the problems stem from everything having to boil down to credits and income. What I am thinking of here is not other currencies, but other game mechanics all together - for example I can imagine a deep and complex "reputation/personality" system, where players can gain "reputation" attributes - both positive and negative - through the activities they undertake (or decline to undertake) and their successes and failures therein. These attributes could then become a major factor in the player's interactions with NPCs, factions and powers - and so could become an alternative "reward" economy independent of credits. Indeed, earning and possessing large amounts of credits could even prevent players from gaining (or losing) certain reputation attributes, which in turn could impact their interaction options with NPCs.
It just seems to me that having to balance all the different "personal narrative" routes from on a purely financial basis has to end up producing a distorted economy. If I choose to be a wandering scrap merchant, they I should not expect the same financial rewards as a heroic pirate hunter. But maybe I could reap rewards of a different kind - through the reputation I gain and the contacts and options that provides me?
Just an idea...
Has any consideration been made for introducing other reward systems as an alternative to Credits? Because it seems to me that some of the problems stem from everything having to boil down to credits and income. What I am thinking of here is not other currencies, but other game mechanics all together - for example I can imagine a deep and complex "reputation/personality" system, where players can gain "reputation" attributes - both positive and negative - through the activities they undertake (or decline to undertake) and their successes and failures therein. These attributes could then become a major factor in the player's interactions with NPCs, factions and powers - and so could become an alternative "reward" economy independent of credits. Indeed, earning and possessing large amounts of credits could even prevent players from gaining (or losing) certain reputation attributes, which in turn could impact their interaction options with NPCs.
It just seems to me that having to balance all the different "personal narrative" routes from on a purely financial basis has to end up producing a distorted economy. If I choose to be a wandering scrap merchant, they I should not expect the same financial rewards as a heroic pirate hunter. But maybe I could reap rewards of a different kind - through the reputation I gain and the contacts and options that provides me?
Just an idea...
As previous posters have mentioned, while there'll be a price nerf, there also needs to be a fix: namely, that of the PWA and hot spot viability.
On a personal note, exploration is my favourite activity so it would be nice to increase profits from this. However, exploration may be difficult to apply the "risk versus reward" methodology to. Unless you really mess up, for instance flying into a star, exploration is pretty risk free.
EDIT
Something else that would be nice to have - OT for this thread I know, but it can't hurt asking
- is a different way of getting trit from carrier store to the depot. I..e directly instead of loading it on to your ship then loading it back to the carrier.
On a personal note, exploration is my favourite activity so it would be nice to increase profits from this. However, exploration may be difficult to apply the "risk versus reward" methodology to. Unless you really mess up, for instance flying into a star, exploration is pretty risk free.
EDIT
Something else that would be nice to have - OT for this thread I know, but it can't hurt asking
- is a different way of getting trit from carrier store to the depot. I..e directly instead of loading it on to your ship then loading it back to the carrier.
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Starting with a nerf! How very un-fd.
My initial impression is, oh look Aunty Odyssey is coming, let's clean the house PDQ, when the message was "working as intended" until very recently.
Why not just buff things? Why the need for the nerfbat to be swung again?
And, really, the horse has bolted and gone way over the hills as people have mined themselves silly anyway, so in fairness to future players, why not just leave it?
My initial impression is, oh look Aunty Odyssey is coming, let's clean the house PDQ, when the message was "working as intended" until very recently.
Why not just buff things? Why the need for the nerfbat to be swung again?
And, really, the horse has bolted and gone way over the hills as people have mined themselves silly anyway, so in fairness to future players, why not just leave it?
Another nerf in a long series of nerfs while broke stuff is allowed to remain broke.
Who cares how much money new players make? Has ZERO effect on my gameplay. Every time I find myself coming back to the game, rubbish like this is announced. I have 17 years of upkeep on my fleet carriers(yeah, one on each account), so I got tons of cash. Has that ruined the game for any of you "whiners"? If so, please tell me how my ridiculous balances on both accounts (R3PER and Saros Raxxla on inara if you want to see) has had an impact.
Like my Uncle Olaf used to say: "Folks that complain about mining payouts are the ones too lazy to do it".
(orientation of capital ship hologram while in SC, disappearing jump target when pressing next system button while FSD is charging, deposit fragment stuck in rock, maximum yield exceeded message when you are core mining and clearly in blue with checkmark, core rocks sporadically not signaling while flying forwards, no mouse functionality in livery menus just to name a few, and I won't start on magically appearing NPC interdictors who should be on cool down and suddenly appear in front of you in SC after a drop...)
All reported, still broke. Most likely will break more as with the recent "patches and re-balances" blunders causing nothing to be in demand. Who cares how much money new players make? Has ZERO effect on my gameplay. Every time I find myself coming back to the game, rubbish like this is announced. I have 17 years of upkeep on my fleet carriers(yeah, one on each account), so I got tons of cash. Has that ruined the game for any of you "whiners"? If so, please tell me how my ridiculous balances on both accounts (R3PER and Saros Raxxla on inara if you want to see) has had an impact.
Like my Uncle Olaf used to say: "Folks that complain about mining payouts are the ones too lazy to do it".
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Unless you really mess up PvE combat is also risk free. It doesn't take much to know when to high wake. This is my problem with this whole risk vs reward thing.
And if an explorer messes up they lose a LOT, weeks to months of work, and start over in terms of travel. If a bounty hunter dies they lose at most a few hours of play. From that point of view exploration is much riskier.
Unless you sell your data to your carrier...
This is good news team !! Thank you very much for these changes, there would be only one other one that we ask you please, more tritium in large stations that we made a community for it !!!, a lot of time is wasted recharging the carrier, and most importantly, every 3 carrier hops I waste one time of my life WAITING FOR HIM! that is unthinkable in a video game !!! They could lower the jump and cool down to 5 minutes with all these changes too, everything would be perfect .. PLEASE !!!! thank you very much again! Cheers
Although not monetary balancing please also up the ammo on the shock cannons, at least double the magazine, maybe quadruple it. They are potent, but you can't engineer them and synth is really expensive. This may make them a bit more of an option compared to engineered frag cannons.
Also:
please lower mat requirements to unlock human tech. Right now the requirements are far too high for these edge case weapons. Have it low enough would make them impulse buy / unlock territory and encourage experimentation.
Also:
please lower mat requirements to unlock human tech. Right now the requirements are far too high for these edge case weapons. Have it low enough would make them impulse buy / unlock territory and encourage experimentation.