ANNOUNCEMENT Game Balancing

[M4RTH4]

Not sure about that. I know plenty player groups that like to do their BGS in Private. etc.

I said 'power play' not 'BGS.' Even now I'm doing BGS in a private group.

Or at least I would be, but the game's stuck giving me orange sidewinders in witchspace

 

[Rubbernuke]

Pretty sure some tweaks would be necessary, no doubt. But in esence incentivizing Open play for PP and BGS does not need to exclude solo/private players.

BGS I'm in total agreement. But depending on the plans re Powerplay we need to have some sort of transformation to bring it out from the BGS' shadow.

I did propose this, which does both modes: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...ti-5c-mode-specific-plus-other-tweaks.552045/

 

[Viajero]

Mining and Trade

Mining has been the most lucrative role within Elite Dangerous for a long time. While this makes perfect sense as pilots find, extract, and transport huge quantities of precious minerals, the gap has become disproportional. This has allowed even brand new Commanders to become wealthy enough to buy the highest performing ships very quickly. For the health and longevity of Elite Dangerous, we're going to considerably reduce the payout of this activity so that it remains lucrative but players won't feel compelled to head out to the latest triple hotspot whenever they need credits.

The following changes will be implemented early next week as a starting point:

These approximate maximum prices offered by markets for the following commodities will be introduced:

• Painite - 600,000
• Low Temperature Diamonds - 700,000
• Void Opals - 1,300,000

Pretty sure I must be missing something but, why do Void Opals still stay at 1.3 MM ? I mean current VO max prices are precisely around that mark. Isnt the intent precisely to reduce mining pay outs overall?

 

[szymciu07]

Pretty sure I must be missing something but, why do Void Opals still stay at 1.3 MM ? I mean current high prices are precisely around that mark. Isnt the intent precisely to reduce mining pay outs?

The intent is to balance risk/profit. They can't really nerf mining very much. Laser mining is easy. Deep core mining can kill you if you do it wrong. Or can yield low results if you do it wrong. So that will be the object of the balance. Every Deep Core hotspot is the same, there's no real benefit in double/triple hotspots. So you will still be able to earn lots of credits, just not in the most boring way possible

And something I will be posting everytime I can: AX Missions please! THE MOST risky PVE Combat deserves more love credit-wise. Truly.

 

[Danieros]

The BGS is set up to collate activity over one tick (24hrs ish) across modes, allowing time to do what you want. Since the BGS is the whole game really activity wise you can't really tell exactly what someone is doing or will do (no explicit pledges)- cause (cash data, kill, trade etc with unknown factions) is disconnected from effect (BGS outcome) unlike Powerplay where you can map an event 1:1 from cause to effect (i.e. chasing it in).

You can never really know how much or with whom someone is working, and that with the BGS you can be working against your faction to help your faction- something thats 5C in Powerplay but 'normal' in the BGS.

You mean the PP UI that updates up to like 30 minutes AFTER a delivery occurs? You can dodge that in so many ways.

In BGS the mission NPCs may send assassins and all similar stuff you'd get on PP when holding merits. If you change the specialized scanners to show what kind of work a player has been doing and current missions they have, you'd achieve similar tracking that you get when you target a player and see their pledge.

 

[RC1000Zero]

The flight model is so superior compared to SWS.

i would not say its "superior to SWS" its different, and SWS never wanted to be a 100% acurate simulation with its flight model, becasue frankly that woudl look silly with star wars ships

 

[Grasher21]

This would be my suggestion for money per hour per activity taking into account the activity itself, the risk and the skill necessary to perform such activity:

ACTIVITY: Laser Mining

• no risk
• no need for a "decent" ship
• no skill needed

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... from now on, all other activities go like this:

ACTIVITY: Deep Core Mining

• low risk +5% (because of the detonation and flying closer to the asteroids)
• need for an ok ship with some maneuverability +5%
• skill needed to control the ship and pinpoint +15%

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

-----

ACTIVITY: Passenger Missions

• low risk +5% (because of the possibility of having illegal passengers)
• no need for a "decent" ship +0%
• no skill needed +0%

Reward in 1h should be around 262,5M, an increase of 5% from laser mining

-----

ACTIVITY: Low Conflict Zones

• low risk +5% (well, because it has PvE)
• needs a somewhat ok ship +5%
• needs a somewhat ok skill +5%

Reward in 1h should be around 287,5M, an increase of 15% from laser mining

-----

ACTIVITY: Medium Conflict Zones

• medium risk +7,5% (well, because it has a bit harder PvE than small CZs)
• needs an ok ship +7,5%
• needs a somewhat ok skill +5%

Reward in 1h should be around 300M, an increase of 20% from laser mining

-----

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

 

[derLichtkrieger]

Thanks Bruce and Frontier! It was about time, As a squadron leader we often discussed the need to tell new squad members that there is more to Elite than to make money and get rich. And to grind the big three on the fast lane.
It is very appreciated that risk and effort will pay out more than lazy going "where the money is". We are looking forward to the upcoming chances.

But only ONE MORE THING:

If you follow your new approach, that risk should be more lucrative, what about putting some benefit into doing BGS - Stuff in Open? 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...

 

[Spacegamejunkie]

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.

To this end, we have taken a close look at the current state of the game and where we would like it to be. Using our data combined with your feedback, we have created a plan of incremental changes we hope will bring the key gameplay mechanics more in line with each other.

What's Changing?

Elite Dangerous has seen a lot of changes since its release in 2014. Among many other aspects of the game, these changes have affected the core gameplay elements and how players earn credits. Over that time, while we have made some balancing adjustments, these elements have inevitably grown out of sync.

In response to your feedback, will bring a series of balancing adjustments to the rate at which credits are earned in each core gameplay mechanic: mining, trade, combat and exploration. Our goal is to have rewards better match the level of skill, effort, and risk each method requires. This means we'll see increased credit rates in some activities and reductions in others.

Crucially, this re-balancing will be an ongoing process where we spend time observing how the changes affect the game and how you, the community, respond both in-game and with your feedback. This may mean several adjustments are needed for each type of gameplay before settling on final values. Giving each method attention in isolation will allow us to more accurately see the results and tweak accordingly, hence the step by step approach, but ultimately they all need to work in the context of each other.

Mining and combat stand out from your feedback as needing the most attention with regards to balancing. As such, we will begin with mining, bring the top range down to a point we see as fair and look at which aspects of mining should offer the greatest rewards based on the skill required.

After this, we intend to look at increasing bounties and solo combat missions in the weeks that follow to meet expected levels. From there we can turn to the still important but less pressing elements such as other mission types and exploration.

These changes will be woven into Elite Dangerous lore and introduced through the narrative. The first can be expected early next week in the form of a GalNet article.

Mining and Trade

Mining has been the most lucrative role within Elite Dangerous for a long time. While this makes perfect sense as pilots find, extract, and transport huge quantities of precious minerals, the gap has become disproportional. This has allowed even brand new Commanders to become wealthy enough to buy the highest performing ships very quickly. For the health and longevity of Elite Dangerous, we're going to considerably reduce the payout of this activity so that it remains lucrative but players won't feel compelled to head out to the latest triple hotspot whenever they need credits.

The following changes will be implemented early next week as a starting point:

These approximate maximum prices offered by markets for the following commodities will be introduced:

• Painite - 600,000
• Low Temperature Diamonds - 700,000
• Void Opals - 1,300,000

To recognise and reward the extra effort and skill needed for core mining, the majority of minerals extracted this way will see an increase in price, barring Void Opals mentioned above. Several mining commodities which can be bought will have the range of their prices increased, resulting in a higher number of goods with strong profit margins (25,000+) when commodity markets are in suitable states.

To benefit trade, we'll also bring the following changes:

• Commodity markets will offer the average price rather than minimum price when selling in bulk. This will affect all commodities.
• The base prices of a number of general salvage items will be increased.

What's Next?

As above, these first changes will happen early next week. We'll spend time observing their effects and listening to your feedback before deciding whether further adjustments are needed.

Next, we intend to adjust combat rewards in the form of bounties and mission payouts. You can expect to hear the planned changes before the date is announced in a post similar to this one.

Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding that this isn't a fast process and it will take time for the effects to become clear.

We would also most importantly like to thank you for your continued constructive feedback on this topic, which will be invaluable during this process!

Thanks for your support,

o7

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.

 

[Arsen Cross]

ABOVE ALL: make sure to adjust bgs buckets to account for income changes!

I’m very excited about rebalances to earnings. I have a few things to say on it and responses to some other posts.

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

I like the idea proposed to increase scout payments to 100k each. For fully engineered elite pilots these are jokingly easy but they are still very deadly in packs. I also agree that interceptor payouts should go up too but I also think gibbing needs to be looked at too as it’s very easy for a wing to do. For the ax cg we were doing it with a bunch of players from the Elite Week server and we averaged 1-3 seconds per kill against Cyclopes with a wing of 4. We spent significantly more time finding targets and positioning for the kill than actually fighting. By a 20:1 ratio, I’d wager. It makes no sense that the goids just sit there peacefully waiting for a wing of players they are scanning and detecting weapons and equipment on that are specifically designed to kill them. I think gibbing could largely be resolved by making the goids aggress the second they see the guardian and ax weapons.

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

Make the criminal whose bounty is being claimed pay the bounty as part of their rebuy process, in full. A death alone is not a punishment for pvp players. The kind of activity that generates hundreds of millions in bounties is exclusive to pointless murdering. We lawful players need reason to hunt these criminals and justify severely gimping our combat abilities by sacrificing a shield booster or chaff for a kill warrant scanner.

I have actually had a long standing desire to see A-rating sensors get sub slots for equipping scanning equipment to alleviate the issue of gimping yourself by using a KWS. Similar in his functionality to equipping an srv bay and then equipping the srv in it. If implemented I’d like to see the sensor size halved and rounded down to the nearest whole number to determine how many sensors you can mount:

8a / 2 = 4
7a / 2 = 3 (.5 rounded down)
6a / 2 = 3
5A / 2 = 2 (.5 rounded down)
4a / 2 = 2
3a / 2 = 1 (.5 rounded down)
2a / 2 = 1
1a / 2 = 0 (.5 rounded down)

This would benefit everyone in every profession. Equipping scanners in these new slots would still incur their normal weight, power and other outfitting requirements. Multi role ships equipped with scanning equipment would actually be viably survivable in open play. Pvp bounty hunters and pirates alike could use their professions scanners without feeling like they cut their own legs out from under them as well. in my opinion this is greatly needed especially as the Kill Warrant Scanner is largely considered useless due to the sacrifices you make to your survival to equip it. This means in order for income changes to bounty hunting to be property implemented this needs to be fixed.

just make sure to only apply this to a rated sensors so that the pvp players have to make a choice to run their meta low mass or take the extra weight for the increased functionality.

I'll double check with the devs for you, but I understand them to be the maximum prices assuming optimal market conditions.

I think it’s important with mining not to make the difference between peak and normal prices too small. It is often a month or more between peak prices being available for certain goods as it requires a perfect storm of multiple bgs states going active at once to receive the 1.5m/ton prices we saw on painite a couple weeks ago. Right now you can expect 700-800k at any given moment for a normal price. A 600k peak price may sound like only a 200k reduction but in reality daily income from it would be significantly below that.

We'd love to improve PvP for you - let me know with a forum message or on any social channel what your feedback is. For now, this is a discussion about game balance.

Addressing the scanner issue I mentioned above would go a long way to helping this issue. Paying out full bounty on the criminals giving lawful a reason to hunt them or limiting bounty payout to the criminals rebuy to encourage criminals to use cheaper ships if they can’t afford to pay it and reward hunters killing the bigger ones. Either way you go though; the criminal needs to pay that redeemed bounty during rebuy

I'm pro Open-only Powerplay and BGS personally. I understand this is a long standing debate and know a few of the reasons it hasn't happened before. Maybe we'll be ready to have that conversation again sometime in the near future.

I’m looking forward to this conversation. As a former powerplay leader and bgs participant.. getting my efforts ganked from solo mode is worse than being ganked in the game. Solo/PG attacks on my bgs feel like I’m being held down while someone just pummels me. If someone wants to pvp me in the bgs, they should have to deal with me, not just the buckets from a risk free environment

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’m completely against player set bounties as a mechanic. We already have means to pay people for claiming a kill on our behalf with the fleet carrier market and cargo transfers.

Diminishing returns could certainly help with this - good thinking!

I’m not a fan of applying diminishing returns and measurement systems and mechanics to repeatedly pvp killing the same player. Even if it penalizes it. If something goes wrong or an unpredictable side effect occurs it has a huge chance of promoting griefing

For players talking about smuggling - we're don't intend to change the rewards for illegal goods just yet. First, we'd like to have Authorities deliver more dynamic fines based on local conditions, not just the galactic average.

Until then, we risk it becoming essentially the same as regular trade but more powerful and we'd prefer it to be a 'higher risk, higher pay' alternative rather than strictly better.

smuggling is something I want to love but can’t. I hope this profession is taken seriously and gets major love. I appreciate the acknowledgement of how difficult it is to balance without diminishing the value of normal trade.

Trade is the next thing I want to talk about. I feel that across the board commodities need their value increased while keeping their values in relation to each other relatively similar. Right now collecting cargo found in the game world of almost every type is only really viable for income for the first 5 hours of gameplay before its completely irrelevant as an income source and starting out this was one of the most fun things for me to do back in 2015. Simply exploring and picking stuff up to earn.

we also need wider margins between purchase and sell prices. One of the things I organized for Turning The Wheel was carrier ops where we pick up commodities and then sell them to specific markets for profit to increase influence. While tritium was readily accessible for 4K a ton due to the infinite supply bug this worked great and was extremely fun and profitable for all involved and occasionally we can do some minor trading of agronomic treatments for some stations but even this is rare. Either way though we are usually stuck witha profit margin of 1k credits a ton, give or take and while everyone find the ops fun; no one wants to participate because the profit margins make ita waste of time for bgs influence, the traders hauling the cargo and even the carrier owner winds up needing to take a loss if they want to have any meaningful impact on the bgs with the op.

I’d also like to see stations with ridiculously large supplies of goods they are producing drop their prices lower than they go now when their surplus is in the millions of tons.

—

pvecombat income needs increases for ax, cz missions and bounties.

For bounties I would like to see the kill warrant scanner revived by making it so a typical elite combat npc found in a haz res (that aren’t engineered) has a total average of 1 million credits in bounties spread across several bounties from different factions. With the highest of those bounties being from other jurisdictions to emulate them not wanting to hang out in the place they are ‘hottest’ in.

engineered npc’s with bounties should have bounties that far exceed 1million.The wing missions for thes engineered npc’s that have you facing a full wing of engineered npc’s need rewards in excess of 5m,up from the 1-2m they hit now.

passenger missions need to have their ratio adjusted so thatshort to mid range exploration missions pay a little bit more and the quantity of them is reduced in favor of more standard transportation missions. It doesn’t make sense that more passengers want to explore than get from the surface of a planet to the station in orbit for work etc.

Missions offered via inbox where the faction is soliciting you directly need to be dramatically increased in rewards. As a triple elite it’s silly that factions contact me and expect me to drop everything for a 500k payout to kill 20 civilians.

massacres in general of all types need rewards that property represent the quantity of ships being killed

I’m sure I have more but for now I’ll leave it all at this. Thanks for reading.

 

[Just Paul]

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

As already stated divide the bounty by the number of wing members instead of giving each wing member the full bounty. The same should be for PvE bounties. It should work similar to wing missions to be coherent. As it is right now wing bounty hunting is to strong.
There is still the issue there you can just forgo your ship if you don't want to or can pay your bounties. But I don't believe it would faster than going mining and transferring credits via carriers.

As part of combat adjustments - I think now that we have commodity markets in carriers the 2 million limit on bounty payouts serves no purpose and should be removed to encourage PvP bounty hunting.

There's extremely notorious players out there with bounties in the hundreds of millions, would make for extremely interesting gameplay for both the bounty hunters and wanted players.

I'm all for uncapping both PvP and PvE bounties, but PvP bounties need to be decoupled from the bgs before that change. There are already groups gaming PvP bounties for their bgs. A few go on a killing spree on opposing faction npcs in their controlled system and once they are close to 2mil of bounties a friendly wing of 4 "kills" them and now you have 8mil of bounties for your own faction. No res sites or comp beacon needed. It takes a lot out of bgs strategy and just reduces it to which group can kill each other more per day.

For bounties... the person with the bounty has to pay it to the bounty hunter, so you could transfer credits, but no net gain.

That's kinda in the game already. If you die with a bounty on your ship you need to pay it to get your ship back. If you can't you loose your ship though. Only wing payouts break that by multiplying the bounty payout.

 

[FlyingBrickyard]

Putting aside the worries that lots of additional things are about to be broken - My major concern with this effort is that it is being done before the underlying bugs and problems have been addressed. It's precisely backward, and is like painting over a patch of rust and calling it "job done".

At best it'll look a little better (but still not quite right) for a little bit, while the fundamental problems continue to fester under the surface.

In short, get everything working properly, then attempt to balance it.

Anything else isn't going to really fix anything and will ultimately be a waste of effort.

 

[Mastadon623]

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.

To this end, we have taken a close look at the current state of the game and where we would like it to be. Using our data combined with your feedback, we have created a plan of incremental changes we hope will bring the key gameplay mechanics more in line with each other.

What's Changing?

Elite Dangerous has seen a lot of changes since its release in 2014. Among many other aspects of the game, these changes have affected the core gameplay elements and how players earn credits. Over that time, while we have made some balancing adjustments, these elements have inevitably grown out of sync.

In response to your feedback, will bring a series of balancing adjustments to the rate at which credits are earned in each core gameplay mechanic: mining, trade, combat and exploration. Our goal is to have rewards better match the level of skill, effort, and risk each method requires. This means we'll see increased credit rates in some activities and reductions in others.

Crucially, this re-balancing will be an ongoing process where we spend time observing how the changes affect the game and how you, the community, respond both in-game and with your feedback. This may mean several adjustments are needed for each type of gameplay before settling on final values. Giving each method attention in isolation will allow us to more accurately see the results and tweak accordingly, hence the step by step approach, but ultimately they all need to work in the context of each other.

Mining and combat stand out from your feedback as needing the most attention with regards to balancing. As such, we will begin with mining, bring the top range down to a point we see as fair and look at which aspects of mining should offer the greatest rewards based on the skill required.

After this, we intend to look at increasing bounties and solo combat missions in the weeks that follow to meet expected levels. From there we can turn to the still important but less pressing elements such as other mission types and exploration.

These changes will be woven into Elite Dangerous lore and introduced through the narrative. The first can be expected early next week in the form of a GalNet article.

Mining and Trade

Mining has been the most lucrative role within Elite Dangerous for a long time. While this makes perfect sense as pilots find, extract, and transport huge quantities of precious minerals, the gap has become disproportional. This has allowed even brand new Commanders to become wealthy enough to buy the highest performing ships very quickly. For the health and longevity of Elite Dangerous, we're going to considerably reduce the payout of this activity so that it remains lucrative but players won't feel compelled to head out to the latest triple hotspot whenever they need credits.

The following changes will be implemented early next week as a starting point:

These approximate maximum prices offered by markets for the following commodities will be introduced:

• Painite - 600,000
• Low Temperature Diamonds - 700,000
• Void Opals - 1,300,000

To recognise and reward the extra effort and skill needed for core mining, the majority of minerals extracted this way will see an increase in price, barring Void Opals mentioned above. Several mining commodities which can be bought will have the range of their prices increased, resulting in a higher number of goods with strong profit margins (25,000+) when commodity markets are in suitable states.

To benefit trade, we'll also bring the following changes:

• Commodity markets will offer the average price rather than minimum price when selling in bulk. This will affect all commodities.
• The base prices of a number of general salvage items will be increased.

What's Next?

As above, these first changes will happen early next week. We'll spend time observing their effects and listening to your feedback before deciding whether further adjustments are needed.

Next, we intend to adjust combat rewards in the form of bounties and mission payouts. You can expect to hear the planned changes before the date is announced in a post similar to this one.

Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding that this isn't a fast process and it will take time for the effects to become clear.

We would also most importantly like to thank you for your continued constructive feedback on this topic, which will be invaluable during this process!

Thanks for your support,

o7

I for one welcome these global changes. For too long, your only real choice to earn money is to go mining. While I personally enjoy mining---and indeed was one of the first activities I did when I got the game---to everything there needs to be a balance, and all the other professions underpay relative to mining---especially combat and mission-oriented gameplay.

With regards to rewarding the extra effort and skill needed for core mining, that's great to hear. However, I haven't herd any discussions about doing some sort of buff to SSD mining, which requires more skill than laser mining, but slightly less than core mining. Have the developers given any thought to how that style of mining can be rewarded better than it is now to make it more lucrative than straight laser mining? One thought I have would be to make all SSD deposits yield as many chunks per successful extraction as LTD SSD spots currently do. This would especially benefit Tritium mining, which is used to power FCs rather than just make money.

 

[Grimeripe]

As someone who hates the ganking in open (even the risk of ganking puts me off, which is why I had to retire my type 9 because of NPC interdictions).

However: If you could make it so that conflict zones are "temporatily open" for all players, it would add a nice pvp element to warfare, and reduce the "parking a type 10 with turrets and haul in the bonds like a trawler" gameplay. You enter a combat zone, you will encounter other players,you leave the combat zone, you are back in whatever game mode you were in.

I know this is far from balancing,but it is an idea for pvp as that was mentioned.

 

[Namix]

I know this isnt really part of the discussed changes yet but regards Power Play and BGS and the game mode i always thought a "weighted" approach might work out better than the "open only" discussion.

i:e , if Open is 100% returns on your actions then PG would return 50% returns on your actions and Solo would return 25% on actions, the general idea is to make the risk of doing it in Open far more efficient / powerful than the lesser risk taken in PG/Solo , it would also still allow people to play "their way" without forcing anything on them.

The %'s could be tweeked to reflect what risk is being taken but i personally think its a fair change that would not impact peoples choice of how they play too much whilst still rewarding those who take on the risk of Open etc.

As with anything im sure there's cases where this might not help but overall it should help mitagate many of the issues talked about in regards to Power Play and BGS work.

 

[don carnage1]

Without reading through 15 pages...

Thank you so much for this @Bruce Garrido.

As others have said, it’s really important that Thargoid combat bonds are given a buff... specifically Interceptors and AX Conflict Zones. These are by far the most difficult PVE combat in the game, and in my opinion, all other combat payouts should be balanced against that fact.

Basically: Interceptors = Void Opals.

 

[Screemonster]

ABOVE ALL: make sure to adjust bgs buckets to account for income changes!

Absolutely. Bounties are already by far the most effective BGS lever in terms of effort-to-effect on top of being insanely versatile due to the fact that you can gather them in one system and use them to swing influence in another. That second part alone makes them pretty broken - if you control a haz-res anywhere and expand into a system with a long cruise to the station, a carrier with a redemption office parked next to the star will let you push your influence up to control without ever docking at that system's station.

 

[Rinkashikachi]

You are not balancing it, neither fixing it.

600k for Painite is still a lot, I will continue to grind it and get a lot of cash. I'm in the game for 10 hours and already have fully geared ASP Exp, fully geared Python and additional 400 millions. I've already "beaten" your game, there is really not much left to do. I think I will get a fully geared Anaconda and enough money for the rest of my life with no problems. Thats selling Painite for 900k. -300k is close to no difference, amount of money for literally 0 effort is insane. You spend just one hour casually farming in solo play without ANY threats and jumping to system which is almost always closer than 200ly. Boom easy money. My little sister can do that.

If you want to fix it, you have to implement a proper dynamic, player-driven economy, not hardcoded garbage like you have right now.

 

[Skollxbox]

I just feel like this isnt a rebalance for new or even high tier players. Havent exploited the game yet ? Don't have a carrier yet. You never will unless you treat this game as a second job or wait for us to screw up so you have to exploit to move forward. Don't let working adults fall through the design cracks :/

 

[Darth Ender]

You are not balancing it, neither fixing it.

600k for Painite is still a lot, I will continue to grind it and get a lot of cash. I'm in the game for 2 days and already have fully geared ASP Exp, fully geared Python and additional 400 millions. I think I will get a fully geared Anaconda and enough money for the rest of my life with no problems. Thats selling Painite for 900k. -300k is close to no difference, amount of money for literally 0 effort is insane. You spend just one hour casually farming in solo play without ANY threats and jumping to system which is almost always closer than 200ly. Boom easy money. My little sister can do that.

If you want to fix it, you have to implement a proper economy, not hardcoded garbage like you have right now.

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.