ANNOUNCEMENT Game Balancing

[Miko]

It's pretty insulting that it has taken years to recognise the need for balance within Elite whilst you focused on ignoring them in place of charging for boundless cosmetics being produced.

It was bad enough locking Engineers behind a pay wall, leaving non Horizons players to suffer the consequences whilst being pit in the same universe. It's bad enough that the big ships can be wrecked by a pair of FDL's sporting cascade railguns, and that's even when you're fully engineered yourself.

There is much to be done to get it right within Elite. Much to be done... Lol.

 

[GraphiteGB]

Hum so do I sell the Benitoite now or wait to see what the Price increase should be on Monday... got 14 tons in this krait mk2 that only took 8 mins to get in the ring... currently worth 13.7 Million..
Choices..

 

[Sanctusice]

Hum so do I sell the Benitoite now or wait to see what the Price increase should be on Monday... got 14 tons in this krait mk2 that only took 8 mins to get in the ring... currently worth 13.7 Million..
Choices..

Sell and if prices go up, spend another 8 minutes to get more

 

[F4fred]

Well, they probably do that because:

1. getting better ships - say big two at least - require rank, that is grind and there is no way around it,
2. Buying and kitting out any ship require money, money can be obtained very slow from anything apart from mining - and that's a grind,
3. Engineering is a two way grind, Felicity is easy as she will unlock on its own, Qwent - most useless of them all - require, grind for permit for Sirius, grind for modular terminals (this is RNG missions discussed somewhere else in this forum), you also need engineering materials and that is MOTHER OF ALL GRIND!
4. Palin require 5000ly trip out to black - that on its own require right ship and loudout, and for few players it is massive wall,
5. With all the above fleet carrier is beyond reach of many players, some (like me) make conscious choice not to get one as I have no use for FC,

I love The Dweller though, very straight forward, you sell illegal stuff to black market, pay 500k and voila... So it is possible to make it bearable...

The thing is that to enjoy the game the way PLAYER WANTS, player has to go through stupid loops to get the tool to actually play/have fun (better ship)... I do appreciate that grind is expected to some extent but for goodness sake, what ED does is massive overkill... And please just for a minute think about MAJORITY of players. Majority of players are casuals with families, full time jobs. Those ppl do not have infinite amount of time to spend grinding... And suggesting to go and play different game is also stupid. There is really no other game that would give one the opportunity to fly around Milky Way galaxy. No SC does not count... So people grind as there is no other way of getting anywhere in ED...

I would consider myself a casual player having both a job and a family and one of those jobs that meant I didn’t get a long holiday due to COVID. I don’t recognise what you describe at all. You need a better ship with full engineering to have fun?! I had masses of fun flying an unengineered Cobra for several months. Terrible grind to unlock Marco? Never found that at all. Because I had played the game for some time before starting engineering already had the Sirius permit. Getting the rest of it was easy enough. As for being useless I use him for experimentals all the time and have G4 overcharged pinned with him and G5 armoured with Hera. Very rarely need G5 OC so works great. Grinding rank for ships. Never bothered. Hung out in Imperial space and played the game. Got to Duke eventually. Had it for a while before I got a Cutter. Having too much fun with other ships. Fed rank I haven’t bothered with at all, but it keeps going up. One day I will get to Admiral. Might even buy a Corvette.
The only thing stopping players having fun in this game is themselves. There is plenty of fun to be had with or without all the big ships, engineering and masses of credits.

 

[Gendo Ashina]

With bonuses for delivering straight to Prison Colony or Ship and associated missions for bringing them in alive. I like this one.

That would be even more engaging! It might also cause some different outfitting builds which would be cool, gotta have cargo room and limpets most likely.

 

[Guy De Lombard]

Regarding CQC, which I really play a lot in the last couple of weeks:
I'd like to see some more arenas (three different are not really much) and more credit earnings at all. The income should be coupled to the ranks and prestiges and there should be also some ARXs for each played match. As CQC is the hardest Elite rank to get, I'd also like to see some more rewards (e.g. decals, paint jobs etc.) for reaching the top CQC ranks.

A really good thing would be a better matchmaking, especially for team deathmatch, based on the players ranks and kill numbers. I have seen matches where 2 or 3 top players are on one side and the other side only has players with lower rank/prestige numbers, which leads to really frustrating and boring matches...
For a better match balancing the powerups should also be taken into account, especially the weapons PU gives too much power.
Another idea could be to block the powerups for the best 2 or 3 players in the match resp. for the leading team...

 

[This Forum Sucks]

Don't tell me it's because "everyone" "needs" a Fleet Carrier and "must" get it within a week of installing the game?

Nobody is telling you this.

Instead of rushing to Anaconda, not knowing what to do with it and quitting. And/or just whine that they "need" to get a fleet carrier with just few hours of gameplay.

This also isn't happening.

Believe me, with current mechanics folk get the 'big three' and a FC to house them, all G5 engineered, faster than I got my first Annie back in the day.

Or this.

The reason it was changed to be a fixed low payout was because the swap bounty reward was being abused into the billions of credits, at a time when a billion was 1 years worth of game play and bountys were much lower.

This never happened either.

The best part about all of these paranoid grandpa fantasies about the unwashed hordes of feral newbies doing endless exploits because they never learned the value of hard work is that even if they were happening, it wouldn't matter in the slightest. What you're mad about is the idea of people wanting something for nothing and that's not something Frontier can make go away, I'm afraid.

The only thing stopping players having fun in this game is themselves. There is plenty of fun to be had with or without all the big ships, engineering and masses of credits.

Genuine question: why do you care about people owning the bigger ships? It's true that if you don't find the game's endless repetition fun in small ships, a big ship is unlikely to make things any better but why are you specifically framing that as an argument against allowing people to earn the bigger ships and not as a fault with the core gameplay loops themselves?

The whole "these people will just earn the biggest ships quickly, bet bored and leave" argument is pure nonsense - why is that fundamentally worse than someone getting bored halfway through the grind to the biggest ship and leaving? Maybe, and hear me out because I know this sounds a little wild, the real issue is the "getting bored and leaving" part? :V

 

[Exden]

I just created a forum account just to tell you that these changes suck.

Why not raise combat payout first?? Because you will not raise them enough. Otherwise you will first raise combat payouts and that will justify the mining nerf but naah you choose just nerfing...

 

[skananote]

I just created a forum account just to tell you that these changes suck.

Why not raise combat payout first?? Because you will not raise them enough. Otherwise you will first raise combat payouts and that will justify the mining nerf but naah you choose just nerfing...

Hehe, yup, that is what I expect. Mining nerf and something, something got in the way so we broke things... The usual...

 

[D.D.Hariman]

Well. Private Group is still broken since it takes multiple login/log out to get both ships into PG.
Wing is still broken for exploration since one ship can find something but the other ship cannot. 171 PUPPIS One ship confirmed it but got no credits. The other ship shows it still unconfirmed and isn't able to confirm it.

Think I will go get my miners and see what happens.

 

[Okiryu]

For PvP: I think the goal would be to reduce the number of ways to game the system while still providing an incentive for play. When a player with a bounty dies, that player must pay the bounty cost upon death. How about if a player kills another player, the victor gains the bounty proceeds, essentially from the pocket of the other player? Maybe a different set of bounties set aside for "player kills in open play" or "players killed during a community goal" can incentivize a certain type of PvP play. Perhaps an additional category of bounties can reduce the number of ways to maliciously game the system.

 

[This Forum Sucks]

For PvP: I think the goal would be to reduce the number of ways to game the system while still providing an incentive for play. When a player with a bounty dies, that player must pay the bounty cost upon death. How about if a player kills another player, the victor gains the bounty proceeds, essentially from the pocket of the other player? Maybe a different set of bounties set aside for "player kills in open play" or "players killed during a community goal" can incentivize a certain type of PvP play. Perhaps an additional category of bounties can reduce the number of ways to maliciously game the system.

The way to deal with exploits like this is to make a rule against them and then enforce that rule. Deciding to limit what all players can do just because of theoretical future misbehaviour is why we can't trade with other players without spending five billion credits on a ludicrous tchotchke first.

 

[skananote]

Well. Private Group is still broken since it takes multiple login/log out to get both ships into PG.
Wing is still broken for exploration since one ship can find something but the other ship cannot. 171 PUPPIS One ship confirmed it but got no credits. The other ship shows it still unconfirmed and isn't able to confirm it.

Think I will go get my miners and see what happens.

I just dropped out of the game for a while. Enough is enough. Kicked me out of Mission board few times when picking the stuff, kicked me out of the game when arrived to the destination system, kicked me out when I was landing on the outpost. Frak that, I have a life, don't need this incompetent ..

 

[Kryxix]

Edit: removed

 

[Speedcuffs]

Please refute these ingame statements below (or say something related), before more rumours got wings in the community.
View attachment 196256
View attachment 196257

Yes, that certainly needs balancing.

 

[Jmanis]

Just tell fdev how to implement that by changing a couple of numbers in a table and you're good to go!

That's why I suggested tweaking mining missions alongside this. We've already got stateful mining missions for None, Boom and Investment, so we're good to go

...So core minerals, painite, LTDs should have a maximum market price of 50k, maybe up to 100k.

Meanwhile missions for the different types spawn in the different states.
None state: Missions are 6-8t of low value minerals (methane clathrates, methanol monohydrates) for 1-2m
Boom state: Missions are 6-8t of medium value minerals (Osmium, Platinum etc) for 3-4m
Investment state: Missions are for 2-3t of core/high value minerals (Painite, VO, Alexandrite) for 5-6m

Oh, and one big fix? Stop allowing mining missions to accept market-purchased goods. CGs can tell the difference, why can't missions?

Then you get:

• Guaranteed buy value for minerals
• A reason to mine all sorts of different things, then you wheel-and-deal to the missions; and
• It naturally tapers off the value having a massive amount one high value good in your hold. 700t of Painite is probably only going to be good for a half dozen missions on the board before you have to look elsewhere, or wait. You can either offload it all for 50-100k, or try and find those good mission.

I'd also add another point at the end.
- Careful consideration of stateful mechanics allows you to find where is most likely to be a good mission to sell to.

This all boils down to:

• Tweaking market prices
• Tweaking mining mission reward numbers

 

[Kryxix]

Yes, that certainly needs balancing.

Ah, OK, removed, not the proper place and time.

 

[F4fred]

Nobody is telling you this.

This also isn't happening.

Or this.

This never happened either.

The best part about all of these paranoid grandpa fantasies about the unwashed hordes of feral newbies doing endless exploits because they never learned the value of hard work is that even if they were happening, it wouldn't matter in the slightest. What you're mad about is the idea of people wanting something for nothing and that's not something Frontier can make go away, I'm afraid.

Genuine question: why do you care about people owning the bigger ships? It's true that if you don't find the game's endless repetition fun in small ships, a big ship is unlikely to make things any better but why are you specifically framing that as an argument against allowing people to earn the bigger ships and not as a fault with the core gameplay loops themselves?

The whole "these people will just earn the biggest ships quickly, bet bored and leave" argument is pure nonsense - why is that fundamentally worse than someone getting bored halfway through the grind to the biggest ship and leaving? Maybe, and hear me out because I know this sounds a little wild, the real issue is the "getting bored and leaving" part? :V

I don’t care about them owning the biggest ships and if you had read what I wrote properly I said the fun is to be had with or without the big ships. I was never framing any argument about the big ship or anything else. I just find it strange that only way some people can have fun in this game is to have all the toys at once and that somehow playing the game is a “grind”. Now there are things I enjoy doing more then others in the game, but fortunately the thing I found tedious, laser mining, only did a bit of. Even in the midst of the Borann boom I was mining VO in nice quiet hotspots all to myself and having fun. Made a few credits too.

 

[Zieman]

I just find it strange that only way some people can have fun in this game is to have all the toys at once and that somehow playing the game is a “grind”.

This.

 

[efoo]

They are probably hoping to keep everyone happy but they unfortunately won't.
Keep everything as it is already but just make it harder to mine, that you have to build your ship better to adapt to it.

How do you make it harder to mine? For surface mining, it is just point and shoot, not much skill needed. Unless Frontier is removing the collector limpets and you have to fly your ship to scoop up each individual mineral chunk.