So, the removal of rare commodities trading from ED was not surprising. The huge profits were considered an exploit by many and cried over a lot at the forums.
But just how "huge" were these profits in reality?
I recently installed and played a retro video game called "Frontier: First Encounters" from the mid-1990s. It is a space sim where you start in a tiny ship with 100 credits and have to work your way up. It's rather similar to ED actually.
Anyways, what struck me was that in this retro game you can easily progress to the best ship money can buy with the best of equipment within a day of playing. Maybe not in one evening session after work, but if you have a free day it is perfectly doable. And I am not talking about a 24 hour nonstop marathon session here. 6-10 hours of hauling stuff between Sol and Barnards Star and you are there.
So what happened in the 20 years since then?
Rare commodities trading in ED gamma 1.5 was comparably way less profitable than regular trading in FFE.
People were throwing a lot of varying numbers around the forum about how much money rare commodities trading was generating. But even with the highest of these "X Million credits per hour" estimates one thing is clear:
If you look at the prices for high end ships and especially upgrades, there was no way to get to a maxed out anaconda within 6 hours of rare commodities trading. And that is not even counting the time to actually progress to the setup which was generating those X million credits per hour.
Yet in today's community the ED style of hauling regular commodities (about fifty times less profitable than trading in FFE) is considered the norm and the gamma 1.5 style of hauling rare commodities (still about ten times less profitable than trading in FFE) is considered an exploit. Wow.
Where does this massive demand for tedious grind stem from?
It originates from the world of MMORPGs obviously. But when the grind was invented it was for subscription-based games. There it made absolute sense from a developer's perspective. Use every psychological trick to keep your players playing (and paying) as long as possible, disregarding if they have fun in the process. Yet by the end of 2014 the grind has somehow managed to transfer itself via osmosis to non-subscription-based MMOs, even if they have a strong quasi-singleplayer vibe to them like ED has.
Why is the grind here? Just to keep us around as long as possible in hopes of milking some more pennys from us via microtransactions?
Why can't a game just be fun? I already have a job that brings enough grind elements into my life.
Pre-emptive answer to those crying I just want it "easy":
Just because something takes a long time, it is not necessarily hard. And just because something can be done quickly, it is not necessarily easy. But you will never understand that.
But just how "huge" were these profits in reality?
I recently installed and played a retro video game called "Frontier: First Encounters" from the mid-1990s. It is a space sim where you start in a tiny ship with 100 credits and have to work your way up. It's rather similar to ED actually.
Anyways, what struck me was that in this retro game you can easily progress to the best ship money can buy with the best of equipment within a day of playing. Maybe not in one evening session after work, but if you have a free day it is perfectly doable. And I am not talking about a 24 hour nonstop marathon session here. 6-10 hours of hauling stuff between Sol and Barnards Star and you are there.
So what happened in the 20 years since then?
Rare commodities trading in ED gamma 1.5 was comparably way less profitable than regular trading in FFE.
People were throwing a lot of varying numbers around the forum about how much money rare commodities trading was generating. But even with the highest of these "X Million credits per hour" estimates one thing is clear:
If you look at the prices for high end ships and especially upgrades, there was no way to get to a maxed out anaconda within 6 hours of rare commodities trading. And that is not even counting the time to actually progress to the setup which was generating those X million credits per hour.
Yet in today's community the ED style of hauling regular commodities (about fifty times less profitable than trading in FFE) is considered the norm and the gamma 1.5 style of hauling rare commodities (still about ten times less profitable than trading in FFE) is considered an exploit. Wow.
Where does this massive demand for tedious grind stem from?
It originates from the world of MMORPGs obviously. But when the grind was invented it was for subscription-based games. There it made absolute sense from a developer's perspective. Use every psychological trick to keep your players playing (and paying) as long as possible, disregarding if they have fun in the process. Yet by the end of 2014 the grind has somehow managed to transfer itself via osmosis to non-subscription-based MMOs, even if they have a strong quasi-singleplayer vibe to them like ED has.
Why is the grind here? Just to keep us around as long as possible in hopes of milking some more pennys from us via microtransactions?
Why can't a game just be fun? I already have a job that brings enough grind elements into my life.
Pre-emptive answer to those crying I just want it "easy":
Just because something takes a long time, it is not necessarily hard. And just because something can be done quickly, it is not necessarily easy. But you will never understand that.
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