ANNOUNCEMENT Game Balancing

[xenoborg007]

1. True with the exception of FCs.
2. I have never complained that it took several months of playing the game and having fun to get an Anaconda but I resent the implication that I ground for it I was having fun all the way. Little Jimmy would not be able to do it hugely faster using the same methods as the methods I used did not include activities that have become insanely lucrative.
3. I feel somewhat saddened that you were in too much of a hurry to enjoy the journey.
4. Not everybody shares such motivations.

On the contrary it was a means to an end, I now have 3 ships I can do vastly different things on, well I would have if the anaconda was finished for combat / rep grinding.

@Maymo Due to the length of the post I abbreviated newer players to noobs, though re-reading I can see how some would see that as derogatory.

My point stands that credit inflatiomln IS required to allow NEWER PLAYERS to have the chance to catch up with older players....... the same as any MMO does.

However, as you've probably seen through your resets the issue isn't so much that newer players can catch up faster, but HOW MUCH FASTER.

Mining payouts should have been nerfed so much more quickly, but as they were allowed to continue a lot of newer players consider anything less than 250m/hr a waste of time.

This means they will argue any activity not paying out that sum is not worth it and thus miss out on so much gameplay.

For my money I think credit earning should be in the 50-100m/hr range, as high as any gold rush we had prior to last years mining, but achievable across a range of activites.

Whatever FDev finally settle on I've no doubt a lot of vets will still consider it too high, and an equal number of newer players will consider it too low.

And to all that say I want to stand on this poor Jimmy's neck (who is he anyway?), that would still allow a dedicated player to get a Corvette/ Cutter (un-engineered of course) in around a weeks worth of gameplay, with the help of a few guides........ orders of magnitude faster than was possible in the past.

Does the community even realise that they are complaining about a community lead problem? not a developer lead one. The community CHOOSES to help out its fellow pilots by revealing double and triple overlapping hotspots, mining in a single hotspot you quickly realise that the LTD and Painite prices are definitely worth the asking price with how sparse it is. The community reveal this information because they aren't in competition with you, its not a finite resource, the prices will always bounce back up, so who cares if you earn 5 million / 15 / 50 / 500 per hour. Theres only so many ships / upgrades that you want to buy before money basically becomes meaningless anyway, and you do the activities that bring you the most joy rather than the most money.

 

[limpetdwarf]

Nope, new players don't need to earn 100 million per hour to learn about mining. Credit is just credit. If you want to learn mining, you should be doing it for free or low pay, just like in real life.

Who can afford to work for low or no pay in real life?

 

[efoo]

And his method is better? expecting little jimmy to fight the end game boss with a water pistol?

Nope, if lil Jimmy played through the early stages, he will gradually earn bigger and better guns, so by the time he reaches the end stage, he will have the experience and best gun to fight the boss. Rather than just straight to the end with big guns but zero skill.

 

[xenoborg007]

Nope, if lil Jimmy played through the early stages, he will gradually earn bigger and better guns, so by the time he reaches the end stage, he will have the experience and best gun to fight the boss. Rather than just straight to the end with big guns but zero skill.

Your analogy is absolute garbage but still, the progress in this game isn't linear early game ships earn less money than later game ships in pretty much every area, even exploring a better fuel scoop means less downtime so more discoveries so more money.

So little Jimmy will be using a water pistol, a nerf gun then a bb gun for the first 40 levels, then in the final 10 he gets actual guns. Does the first 40 levels sound fun to you?

You want to slow down the slowest part of the game, cause thats all this will do.

 

[F4fred]

Its about 5 years too late to be setting up the progression experience lets face it, conveniently right after they get an influx on new players, myself included via the free epic games store.

The progression in these types of games have always been back loaded, you start off slow and the bigger and better ships allow you to increase the speed of your progression, I made about 300 million in roughly 15 hours of play over the weekend pre nerf, most of that time was spent in an adder trying to mine a measly few LTDs before switching to Painite I only needed like 16 to get a pretty decent asp explorer kitted out, but those 16 took me 70% of 15 hours and that was using the knowledge base and experience of people who have been playing this game for 5 years. That's a natural progression of a games lifespan things become easier and quicker as time goes on not SLOWER. Again there are still gated items / ships behind things other than credits, which is also a good thing in these games.

They want to kill laser mining but at least realise its the new players way of getting introduced to mining, so as I suggested they just make them available to low cargo ships and revert the nerfs.

My experience is the opposite. MMO’s I have played initial progress is swift to get you hooked in then slows as the game goes on. Of course often that is to get you to spend real money on keeping your progress up.

 

[D.D.Hariman]

Ok. Since the CODEX and Wing Exploration have been FC'ed, I have jumped out to Cancuma and got my Python Miners out of mothballs.
Plotted a course to a system about 235ly out of the bubble I mapped about a year ago that has both Icy and Metallic rings that did have hot spots for 8 of the hi value minerals plus Painite and Palladium. May look for some tritium also.
I have a full load of FIXED mining tools and since this is an investigative mission mostly to check out the PWA, I took the 4H FSD Booster so I am only 128 cargo space.
Plan to try and find some of everything and then haul it back to the Bubble and see if I can make a few credits while seeing what happens to the markets.

If you want to follow this, go here..>>> https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/my-odyssey.557925/

 

[efoo]

Your analogy is absolute garbage but still, the progress in this game isn't linear early game ships earn less money than later game ships in pretty much every area, even exploring a better fuel scoop means less downtime so more discoveries so more money.

So little Jimmy will be using a water pistol, a nerf gun then a bb gun for the first 40 levels, then in the final 10 he gets actual guns. Does the first 40 levels sound fun to you?

You want to slow down the slowest part of the game, cause thats all this will do.

Your pity for lil Jimmy is pathetic. This is the new state of game play now, take it or leave it.

 

[Zeeber]

There are so many people on the forums here that are like "Players need to EARN their credits!" which is fine in theory. The problem is at what cost? I'm not going to play for 6 months to get to the next ship. My time is worthwhile and I'm not here for a second job, I want to play a FUN GAME. This game can be fun, and having OPTIONS is what makes it so. I don't want to be shoehorned into combat on any particular day, or mining, or trading, whatever, in a BALANCED game, each one would be fun AND lucrative in it's own way.

Credits/hr should be balanced out for each activity. Miners should make money mining, Traders should make money doing trade routes, combat pilots should make money fighting and explorers should make money exploring. It's that simple. FDev has simply blown up the economy as some sort of "control" over the whole thing and it's really made the new player experience suffer.

Here's a simple thought excercise: Ask yourself "WHY do new players look for a way to make credits?" They want to experience NEW and DIFFERENT CONTENT. So many people are caught up on "IT TOOK ME 6 MONTHS TO GET MY NEXT SHIP RA RA" and fail to realize that the time in months is irrelevant. How many HOURS was that? I put in 90+ hours in my first 2 weeks because guess what, COVID happened and I happen to have a lot of free time. Just like the new people coming in through epic. We all want to experience what the game has to offer and simply slowing down progression for the sake of it is going to hurt the new player base. Plus all the "old" players have been able to take advantage of every gold rush that has happened up to this point, so why shouldn't the new players?

This whole "rebalance" was done in reverse. They should have boosted the other trades prior to adjusting mining and looked at the results. The reason so many people do mining is because it's lucrative, easy to get started in, and allows them to jump start into the various other activities. Perhaps if the other trades such as exploration, combat, and smuggling paid as well, they would outfit and start those activities a lot sooner. Even passenger missions are lucrative, but like mining, some people find it mind numbingly boring. Others enjoy the laid back playstyle. So why not just let people enjoy the content they find themselves doing? Personally I liked mining since it was relaxing and made my account balance go up for the HOURS and effort I put in. I could see a tangible result. THIS IS CRUCIAL.

If I have to grind for days on end to see ANY result, guess what, this isn't a game; it's a JOB. I have other games on my game backlog I can go play. If FDev really cared about the longevity of the game, rewarding players for their time spent is what keeps them playing. Not artificially limiting progress to pad game time. Make each "profession" lucrative in it's own way so players are rewarded for the effort, and let them get into the next section of the game.

And I have news for you; An Anaconda isn't "end game", it's merely the shell of a new playstyle. It used to be endgame because there wasn't anything else to do. But now we have Engineers, modules locked behind Factions, Ships behind factions rep, etc. THERE IS TONS TO DO. Giving a player choice in how they go about it by giving them access to more ships isn't a bad thing. The ship price is only part of the puzzle. There are still modules to upgrade/buy, engineer, and places to go to and do all of that. Having a source of income allows progression to those other systems. Being stuck in a Sidewinder for weeks isn't fun, because you see all these other ships in the game and don't see a way to get them anytime soon, and if you play in open....yeah how fun will that be?

Also the veterans are all complaining about how new players can make 250+ million credits/hr. NO THEY CAN'T. YOU CAN. A new player has no idea how to make that much money because they don't even know the systems the game has thrown at them yet. After sifting through hours of youtube videos and guides, finding out many are out of date and obsolete, finding the "new" meta, and THEN equipping themselves for it, maybe then can they even think about making money in the realm of possibility of 200+ credits/hr; IF they do it perfectly. Which will take hours of doing it before they get the hang of it and know what they are doing. It's going to take awhile. But you know what? They SEE the progress they are making, and that is motivation to keep them moving forward. That is reward. And once they can move on to doing another activity they will because they CAN.

 

[efoo]

Really, it takes you 6 months of play to get your new big Anaconda? You must be doing it wrong.

At the current new "low" painite price, say you only managed to sell them at 300K credits per ton, you can mine at a slow 4-5 hours pace and still earn enough credits to buy an Anaconda. Or is that not fast enough for you, you only want half hour mining = one Anaconda?

 

[Haresus]

The notion that it's those rascal new players who get rich quick using mining tricks does seem to be a bit overblown. Veterans are the ones who keep track of what's most profitable, they're the ones invested enough to mine for 10 hours straight so that they can afford a Fleet Carrier on release, they're the ones who have a mining Cutter already unlocked and outfitted for that kind of work. New players are probably doing missions, trying to figure out combat in Sidewinders or Eagles, or landing on planets.

That's not to say that I don't like the direction of the rebalancing though. I find mining, especially laser mining, to be as exciting as watching paint dry (where are my automated mining laser turrets?), and encouraging that gameplay just seems like an easy way to have people lose interest in the game.

 

[alexzk]

where are my automated mining laser turrets?

I would prefer mining SLF so my co-pilot don't slack most of the time.

 

[Andrix]

Русский:
Сейчас поведение ФДев напоминает мне поведение властей Российской Федерации, которые живут в отрвые от своего населения:

• как только у людей налаживается жизнь и увеличивается доход - влсати придумывают способ отобрать побольше от их дохода;
• курс национальной валюты упал - в этом нет никакой проблемы, т.к. власть живет на нефте доллары;

У меня довольно большой опыт игры и я изучил много механик (стим показывает 5000 часов, хотя я думаю это вранье и в реальности 2000-3000 часов, и это без учета учетки на ПС4)
И да я три раза бросал играть, из-за непонятных механник, потери исследовательских данных за два месяца и т.д.

И если ФДев хочет увидеть реакцию сообщества, то наверное надо написать что-то помимо эмоций...
1. Не вижу проблемы в том, что новые игроки смогут быстро заработать на топовый корабль, т.к. сам по себе стоковый корабль - картонный и ничего в боях не может (в реальности корвет или каттер стоит около 1млрд + кучу времени потраченного на инженеров). И вообще считаю, что надо иметь несколько таких кораблей так, что новичкам надо готовить для этого пару тройков миллиардов + страховки
2. По мне так было уже почти все нормально, за исключеним низкой прибыльности от торговли и сражений. Их я бы советовал поднять
3. У меня есть опасения, что процесс получения капитала в игре превратится в бесконечный гринд, т.к. понадобится еще один каттер еще один корвет еще что-то и т.д. И в итоге игроки не будут вовлечены в другие аспекты игры, т.к. нужен гринд кредитов. А кредиты в игре, как мне кажется, должны получаться сами собой и не стать целью игры, и, как мне кажеться, низкие заработки в игре приведут именно к такому результату для многих, т.к. хочешь купить и прокачть корвет будь любезен гриндить месяц, хочет авианосей - год, условно.


English:
Now the behavior of FDev reminds me of the behavior of the authorities of the Russian Federation, which live in isolation from their population:

• as soon as people's lives get better and their income increases, the people come up with a way to take more of their income;
• the exchange rate of the national currency has fallen - there is no problem in this, because the government lives on oil dollars;

I have quite a lot of experience in the game and I studied a lot of mechanics (steam shows 5000 hours, although I think this is a lie and in reality 2000-3000 hours, and this is without taking into account the account on PS4)
And yes, I quit playing three times, due to incomprehensible mechanics, loss of research data in two months, etc.

And if FDev wants to see the reaction of the community, then probably it is necessary to write something besides emotions ...
1. I do not see a problem that new players will be able to quickly earn money for a top ship. the stock ship itself is cardboard and cannot do anything in battles (in reality, a corvette or cutter costs about 1 billion + a lot of time spent on engineers). And in general, I think that you need to have several such ships so that beginners need to prepare for this a couple of triples of billions + insurance
2. For me, it was almost all right, with the exception of low profitability from trading and battles. I would advise you to raise them
3. I have concerns that the process of obtaining capital in the game will turn into an endless grind, because will need one more cutter one more corvette something else, etc. As a result, players will not be involved in other aspects of the game, because need grind credits. And the credits in the game, it seems to me, should be obtained by themselves and not become the goal of the game, and, as it seems to me, low earnings in the game will lead to exactly this result for many, because if you want to buy and upgrade a corvette, be kind enough to grind for a month, if you want an aircraft carrier - a year, conditionally.

 

[JheredParnell]

Thanks - we appreciate your comment. Ultimately, we have to just start making some changes to see what happens - estimates and predictions can only go so far. The long term is the most important thing.

No offense intended here, but why are you guys doing estimation and predictions instead of just observing people who have the highest incomes within their play style? Simply maintain a count/day of missions/xenos/explorations/resources sold/resources mined for every player. That would give you their play category. Then track their credits/playedhours. Then just watch those top people play that style and see how they do it. We joke in our discord, that it's honestly like the frontier team doesn't even play this game. I don't mean to come off insulting, but that's how it feels sometimes.

Just rambling off the top of my head here:
all laser mining - nerf the heck out of it. it's been too obscenely profitable.
all subsurface mining - improve it (more of them, more specifically toward aligning them to the commodity type of the hotspot they're in)
all core mining - same as above PLUS please do something with pulse wave analyzer to make it different color for sub surface, surface, core and only show coloration for stuff that matches the hotspot type. SO you can truly tell if something is a core.
Before i get flamed for upgrading mining... it's too easy to avoid pirates in mining for hours at a time. Pirates and such need to be able to randomly show up to harass miners. Some sort of mechanism to track down people... maybe add to the pulse wave analyzer a way to see depleted/mined asteroids so you can follow a trail?

combat missions - the combat in this game is challenging because small ships can kill big ships... so in some way you need to create a way to increase combat rewards up into top tier combat without someone who's in a little crapper of a ship. Overall i think any combat missions and bounty rewards should go up 10-20fold.

exploration... 10-20x the rewards in the top end. Same struggle as combat though... a brand new ship can go explore and make 'top tier exploration xp' so there's no way to 'be better' at exploration. Maybe give a gradient of exploration cash based on exploration level factored by the value/cost of their ship or exploration components (FSD range, jump distance, existence of surface scanner etc). ie: a sidewinder with novice exploration skill won't get as much cash exploring the same thing as a fully kitted Krait Phantom with 50+ fsd jump distance and a commander with elite exploration.

I don't know anything about xeno or 'end game stuff'. never cared about it since it was so poor of risk/reward... that should tell you something.

Related to being a trader/miner or finding content: I really want to point out here is look at all these amazing third party tools that are out there for data sharing and use that to revamp your galaxy map and ui elements. 90% of the stuff doesn't work or isn't useful in any capacity.
-i want to mine a commodity, where do i find it?
-i want to sell a commodity, where do i find it?
-i want to upgrade my ship, where do i go?
-i want to buy tier 7 shields, where do i go?

Basically, the answer should not be 'roam around system to system visiting every station until i happen upon what i want'

Related to diversity and options the game is simultaneously sparse/boring then at times overcrowded AF:
-there was 1 best place to grind faction ranks for each empire/federal
-there seems to be 1 best place to do passenger missions (robigo?)
-there always seems to be a handful of best places for mining (so much so that it becomes a clusterF of fleet carriers)

related to missions
-when picking up missions it would be nice if you could grab a handful for the same place instead of them sending you every which way
-it would be nice to pick up several missions of the same type
-source a return material seem inordinately low paying for the time investment
-any combat missions is inordinately low paying
-deliver data are just right for what they are... 20-50k
-deliver resources are probably a bit low
-boom time delivery are hit/miss but see possibly too high for the effort
-boom time wing delivery however are too low for the amount of resouces... as a wing mission how about same price for like 1000-2000 commodities? or for the 3-5k commodities grant about 3-4x more reward since doubling the trips triples the time. (instead of from-to it becomes from-to-from-to)
-any surface bound missions should be like 3-4x more just for time investment.
-any mission destination with high Light second distance within a system should get exponentially scaled in reward for the time investment.

oh and for gods sake can we please let multi crew work within wings? crewmates get crew rewards, wingmates get wing rewards there problem solved.

 

[Thoragon]

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.

How about no? One of the main reasons why I backed the game years ago was because I was told I would be able to play the game the way I want to play it(solo/group only) and not be penalized for it.

 

[limpetdwarf]

Pirates and such need to be able to randomly show up to harass miners.

How do you suggest that the miner defends himself against such pirates?

Maybe give us flying mining fortresses that pack at least 5000t of cargo, a bunch of weapon and missile turrets in addition to all the mining equipment and, of course, very heavy shields and armor --- plus two or three medium sized landing pads so we can carry a fighter for defense, a freighter to fly ourselves and another one for a crew member to trade with stations and settlements because the fortress is too big to dock. Allow us to hire a wing of player or NPC pilots that we pay to protect us --- and make mining pay enough so we can afford that.

Why should a player who sells the same exploration data get more money for it just because he used a more expensive ship to get it? If anything, the player with the cheaper ship should get more money because he's been more efficient in getting the data, and it may have required more effort (time) because the cheaper ship has a lower jump range.

A general remark:

How come that the consideration of player time falls almost entirely under the table? Balancing should consider the amount of time spent on something such that more time spent yields more money such that the credits per hour end up reasonably even between different things. That means that balancing isn't so easy because doing things more efficiently (as the player has to be more skillfull to get the better efficiency) should mean that more efficient players get more money. However, wheather a player is doing something more skillfully than another one is questionable because the more efficient player may simply have a more expensive and better equipped ship and no more skill than the other one (who couldn't affort the ship yet or didn't have time yet to do the engineering or the rank). How should risk be reflected then? Should the player with the more expensive and/or better equipped ship who has a lesser risk get less money?

Some consideration to player time and credits per hour may have been given to passenger missions in that sightseeing missions tend to pay more the longer they take to do. But is that balanced between different types of passenger missions, like transporting passengers from A to B vs. a sightseeing loop? Same goes for other mission types. (The effect of the number of passengers a mission has is also questionable. And it makes no sense that cabins remain empty and can not be filled with more passengers from other missions when they aren't full.)

All this means that balancing things needs to do a lot more than just craking up or down the prices for minerals or the rewards for the existing mission types in bulk.

 

[Riverside]

How do you suggest that the miner defends himself against such pirates?

Maybe give us flying mining fortresses that pack at least 5000t of cargo, a bunch of weapon and missile turrets in addition to all the mining equipment and, of course, very heavy shields and armor --- plus two or three medium sized landing pads so we can carry a fighter for defense, a freighter to fly ourselves and another one for a crew member to trade with stations and settlements because the fortress is too big to dock. Allow us to hire a wing of player or NPC pilots that we pay to protect us --- and make mining pay enough so we can afford that.

Why should a player who sells the same exploration data get more money for it just because he used a more expensive ship to get it? If anything, the player with the cheaper ship should get more money because he's been more efficient in getting the data, and it may have required more effort (time) because the cheaper ship has a lower jump range.

A general remark:

How come that the consideration of player time falls almost entirely under the table? Balancing should consider the amount of time spent on something such that more time spent yields more money such that the credits per hour end up reasonably even between different things. That means that balancing isn't so easy because doing things more efficiently (as the player has to be more skillfull to get the better efficiency) should mean that more efficient players get more money. However, wheather a player is doing something more skillfully than another one is questionable because the more efficient player may simply have a more expensive and better equipped ship and no more skill than the other one (who couldn't affort the ship yet or didn't have time yet to do the engineering or the rank). How should risk be reflected then? Should the player with the more expensive and/or better equipped ship who has a lesser risk get less money?

Some consideration to player time and credits per hour may have been given to passenger missions in that sightseeing missions tend to pay more the longer they take to do. But is that balanced between different types of passenger missions, like transporting passengers from A to B vs. a sightseeing loop? Same goes for other mission types. (The effect of the number of passengers a mission has is also questionable. And it makes no sense that cabins remain empty and can not be filled with more passengers from other missions when they aren't full.)

All this means that balancing things needs to do a lot more than just craking up or down the prices for minerals or the rewards for the existing mission types in bulk.

Your arguments are getting a little extreme now. It's only a competition for Cr/Hr if you make it a competition for Cr/Hr, and you can do virtually any activity in a pretty basic (and cheap) ship. Admittedly that last point may not become clear to the player until they try the bigger ships

 

[limpetdwarf]

Your arguments are getting a little extreme now. It's only a competition for Cr/Hr if you make it a competition for Cr/Hr, and you can do virtually any activity in a pretty basic (and cheap) ship. Admittedly that last point may not become clear to the player until they try the bigger ships

What do you think is extreme about them?

If the ship you're using doesn't matter, then why don't all the ships cost the same and require the same amount of time to equip and to engineer? One could always aregue that the ship prices are rather unbalanced ...

Maybe your statements are a bit extreme: Let it be up to each player to decide for themselves wheather they want to make getting credits per hour a competition or not. Let it be up to each player to decide for themselves which ship(s) they want to use.

That you can do every activity in the cheapest ship you can do it in is a good thing and yet pretty irrelevant. Do you walk the 20 miles to work and back home every day because it's the cheapest option (in terms of money)? What about the time it takes, and how much fun is it? Maybe you don't mind the time and maybe it's fun for you. For others, it's probably not. You can go to places that are 20000 or 65000 LY away in the cheapest ship you can use for that. You go mining in the cheapest ship you can find for it. But how long does it take and how much fun is it? I leave that up to you, so let it be up to me as well and don't claim that if I wanted to use the ship I like best for it rather than the cheapest one is extreme.

If I want to go mining and pirates would show up all the time while I'm at it, there is nothing extreme about wanting to use a ship that I can defeat the pirates with. And what's the alternative? Jump the hundreds of LY to the selling station to sell the 1t of cargo the every 10 minutes (if I get that much) it takes before the next pirate shows up and another couple hundred LY to come back for mining? If you like, use the cheapest ship you can find for mining. I'd say trying to do mining like that would be extreme, if you want to, well, do it. I wouldn't want to do it this way.

And yes, if I want to make money, it does matter to me if I make more or less credits per hour because I prefer to do it most efficiently so that I can get to do the things I actually wanted to do and which I can not afford without the money. Also, if I making money is the thing I want to do, I would want to make as much per hour as I can because it's more fun to me to do it efficiently. It's not a competetion because there isn't anyone I would compete with or would want to compete with --- and if I wanted to make it a competition, what would it matter that I could use the cheapest ship for it. I'd probably use the ship I like best for it. But that's just me.

And please put that kind of mining fortress into the game and give it a jump range of 250LY without requiring the expensive Tritium. Maybe allow it to optionally use Tritium instead for up to 500LY jump range. It would be so cool to have a ship like that for mining and trading and exploration it would give us something to strive for. Maybe make it require some kind of ranking or even double ranking so we need a rank with the mining association and another one with the merchants association and give us fun things to do to get that ranking. Not everyone can or wants to afford an indestructible carrier (which apparently doesn't even fly like a ship, or do they?).

 

[Riverside]

Maybe your statements are a bit extreme

It really isn't. This thread is an opportunity for everyone to put forward their view. Yours is that it should remain possible to progress quickly so you can catch up to long-time players (like me), which is fair enough. You don't need to continue to argue that point

Mining, for the past couple of years now, has been an outlier. It's earning potential is orders of magnitude more than the average even for mining, it appears to be the most obvious issue so it's reasonable that FDev are tackling it first, to bring the maximum closer in line with the intended 'typical play' and intended rate of progression through the early stages of the game (the best bit).

If you want to rush through that you will almost certainly still be able to, just maybe not quite as fast or easily as before.

 

[Maymo]

Why should a player who sells the same exploration data get more money for it just because he used a more expensive ship to get it?

They don’t, exploration data is valued the same regardless of ship type.

But is that balanced between different types of passenger missions, like transporting passengers from A to B vs. a sightseeing loop? Same goes for other mission types. (The effect of the number of passengers a mission has is also questionable.

Yes it is balanced. Passenger, Cargo and Data missions all pay more for longer distance drop-offs. More time, more reward.

And it makes no sense that cabins remain empty and can not be filled with more passengers from other missions when they aren't full.)

VIP passengers don’t want to be bundled in with prisoners of war or violent rebels. Makes total sense...

 

[skananote]

It really isn't. This thread is an opportunity for everyone to put forward their view. Yours is that it should remain possible to progress quickly so you can catch up to long-time players (like me), which is fair enough. You don't need to continue to argue that point

Mining, for the past couple of years now, has been an outlier. It's earning potential is orders of magnitude more than the average even for mining, it appears to be the most obvious issue so it's reasonable that FDev are tackling it first, to bring the maximum closer in line with the intended 'typical play' and intended rate of progression through the early stages of the game (the best bit).

If you want to rush through that you will almost certainly still be able to, just maybe not quite as fast or easily as before.

While I agree in general I still firmly believe that FDev should start from balancing other activities first and adjust mining accordingly. For now they've killed mining for good looking at the posts in this very forum...