How much should Exobiology be worth?

[DemiserofD]

Never bothered since day 1
Also my NPC pilot takes 10%. She earned own carrier already.
And UC takes 12.5% if you own carrier.

You seem like the sort of player who does not explore for credits.

Which is fine!

But in that case, these changes won't impact you one way or another, so why criticize them?

 

[DemiserofD]

i've been away from civilization for literally almost 2 years out in the black. Exploration's only risk is driving into a star because you are watching a second screen or fell asleep or left the computer and forgot you were still playing. If you die any other way then your bar for risk in the game is at such a low level that the word no longer has meaning because everything you can possibly do is risky.

There's no hazards out to get you. no enemies to defeat or circumvent. There's no problems you need to solve to survive. You get paid to press a button near a thing that almost all of the time is completely non-interactive and at most, heats you up a bit letting you know to back off. If exploration is risky, then we're not playing the same game. I'm playing elite dangerous. The game populated by 400 billion systems and the only ones with content that can be considered somewhat risky are all in 2 very tiny concentrated spots called the bubble and soly provided by npc pirates or npc thargoids or human ships.

Old exploration, that was definitely the case. Exobiology changes that, however. To do exobiology, you must put yourself in danger by getting close to a planet, and even a single mistake in those cases can mean death. Look away at the wrong time while gliding? Death. Boost at the wrong time while searching for bacterium? Death.

Even old exploration had Neutron Stars. I've never died to one, but I've never died in PVE combat, either, and I don't think it's fair to say PVE isn't dangerous.

 

[alexzk]

But in that case, these changes won't impact you one way or another, so why criticize them?

I'm that player who thinks any activity must bring +. I'm fine stupid die and pay 36mils re-buy. But once a month.
I'm fine waste time on plants, but that should give me something. Current payout is less if I would just jump and negative if I use carrier. Because carrier consumes money per week, and scans can easy take 1 system per day for low payout.
So I don't think I'm against bigger payout. I just say ... that is sort of useless low paying job now where you may pay extra from your pocket to do it.

 

[Darth Ender]

In aggregate, over time. It's basically a gacha game, true, but they can be balanced, too.




Time efficiency. Any time wasted means credits not earned. If you take a heavily shielded and armored ship out into the black, you'll end up spending 3-4 hours getting there, where a lighter ship can get there in one.

Time efficiency is 100% the core of exploration. Yes, you see cool things, but at its core, it's about doing as much valuable stuff as possible, in the shortest possible amount of time. That IS exploration, from an income standpoint. And it has a lot of room for improvement; as much or more than other non-combat activities like mining, for example.

That's why I think that the existing bonuses for fully FSSing and DSSing a system need to be reworked. Ideally, they would encourage players to not only fly efficiently in supercruise, but also to be able to judge quickly whether or not a system is worth doing, and how best to do it. Do you fly to the gas giant and scan it first, including all its many moons, and then use the lighter gravity further from the star to quickly navigate the other closer planets? Or do you fly out progressively and ignore the gas giant entirely?

These mechanics still exist, even absent the full system bonuses, but they could be improved substantially.

time efficiency only plays out if you're going off a known list. Otherwise exploration is time spent not knowing if a system is going to have anything valuable in it to a huge degree (you can usually filter out y dwarf systems since they tend to only have worthless items). You can't efficiently plan a session out and "win" with exploration of the unknown.

And all that ends up doing incentivizing players to do an activity that is going to give them the highest credits in the least amount of time. That's not good gameplay. It's literally one of the most complained about aspects of the game.

Exploration's purpose needs to be expanded beyond conversion to credits, so that the activity itself has value beyond a currency to the game. As do the other roles. Then the roles and activities in the game no longer become a simple equation of time and profit, because there will be some unique aspect of the game that is only acquired or accomplished thru a given role's activity. And as long as this benefits the player in a balanced way, it doesn't matter what credit value or currency you associate with completing the task ...the player will be rewarded in a way that makes them feel good about effort / time / gameplay involved.

 

[Darth Ender]

Old exploration, that was definitely the case. Exobiology changes that, however. To do exobiology, you must put yourself in danger by getting close to a planet, and even a single mistake in those cases can mean death. Look away at the wrong time while gliding? Death. Boost at the wrong time while searching for bacterium? Death.

look away while gliding to the surface can mean death? What are you doing, nose diving at 90 degrees from supercruise directly into the surfaces of high g planets? No. Looking away is not going to risk death approaching a planet. Boosting is not going to be a death sentence near the surface. If flying near the surface was that dangerous, canyon flying/races wouldn't be possible since nobody but the best of the best would be able to survive them. Approaching planets hasn't changed since horizons was launched half a decade ago. The danger of getting to the surface didn't go up because some static images you can "scan" appeared on the surfaces. you're not dodging volcanic eruptions on approach. Sparse atmospheres didn't add turbulence and plasma black-outs to force you to fly by instrument only. If you die exploring ...it's not a badge of honor story you tell everyone..it's shameful or humorous at best. Like back when you were first learning how to play and accidentally boosted into a roid while mining in an undershielded asp or whatever. That's not mining being risky.

Even old exploration had Neutron Stars. I've never died to one, but I've never died in PVE combat, either, and I don't think it's fair to say PVE isn't dangerous.

I do say it's not dangerous. PVE combat is 100% survivable all the time unless you are looking to die. See an enemy that can defeat you, well they're 100% predictable so just dont engage them, you'll never be forced to or even pushed to. NPC's that you do engage are generally so bad at trying to kill you that the only way fdev has of scaling them is by cheating. see a wing, well picking them off one at a time is an option or just roll in with a tank and take them all on at once. Entirely up to you. The only real scaling you get in npc difficulty and thus risk is in numbers, and that's easily manageable in the game because if the npcs aren't predictable enough, their memory is worse than a goldfish's so you just pop out...pop back in and the new instance gives everyone amnesia. Sure you can become hostile with a faction over time, but that too is predictable and easily handled.

if you do an activity thousands ...upon thousands of times and you never die and you're wildly "successful" at the activity...then either you're an amazingly skilled player ..perhaps top of all players playing the game.. . or the activity isn't risky / requiring skill. We can't ignore how many players are in the "i do this all the time and never die" bucket for any given role the game makes available. They're not all tom cruise in top gun.

 

[photomankc]

I so wish they would develop long term exploration missions that ask for samples from unknown systems in X region with Y conditions. Bonus points if enough of those lead to new technology being unlocked overall or increased.

 

[photomankc]

Time efficiency. Any time wasted means credits not earned. If you take a heavily shielded and armored ship out into the black, you'll end up spending 3-4 hours getting there, where a lighter ship can get there in one.

Time efficiency is 100% the core of exploration. Yes, you see cool things, but at its core, it's about doing as much valuable stuff as possible, in the shortest possible amount of time. That IS exploration, from an income standpoint. And it has a lot of room for improvement; as much or more than other non-combat activities like mining, for example.

I have no idea what you do when exploring in ED but it must be the polar opposite of me.

 

[DemiserofD]

time efficiency only plays out if you're going off a known list. Otherwise exploration is time spent not knowing if a system is going to have anything valuable in it to a huge degree (you can usually filter out y dwarf systems since they tend to only have worthless items). You can't efficiently plan a session out and "win" with exploration of the unknown.

You absolutely can! It's most of what I do! You can judge the best nearby mass codes, you can efficiently plot to minimize time spent scooping, you can maximize your odds of finding good planets and, once you do, maximize the efficiency of your interplanetary travel! Exploration is ALL efficiency!

And all that ends up doing incentivizing players to do an activity that is going to give them the highest credits in the least amount of time. That's not good gameplay. It's literally one of the most complained about aspects of the game.

That's the opposite of the problem! The problem isn't trying to find out the best payouts in the game, the problem is knowing what are the highest payouts in the game. Players knew that LTD mining was the best way to make money, there was no alternative, so they felt pressured to do exclusively that.

This achieves the opposite of that, and lets players specialize in what they feel they do best or enjoy the most, or just do whatever their whimsy demands!

Exploration's purpose needs to be expanded beyond conversion to credits, so that the activity itself has value beyond a currency to the game. As do the other roles. Then the roles and activities in the game no longer become a simple equation of time and profit, because there will be some unique aspect of the game that is only acquired or accomplished thru a given role's activity. And as long as this benefits the player in a balanced way, it doesn't matter what credit value or currency you associate with completing the task ...the player will be rewarded in a way that makes them feel good about effort / time / gameplay involved.

I don't disagree.... but Credits are a perfectly acceptable reward, too. And you find materials while you're out there, as well. What more could you reward players with?

But even if you are going to expand other rewards, there's no reason not to expand credit payouts, as well.

look away while gliding to the surface can mean death? What are you doing, nose diving at 90 degrees from supercruise directly into the surfaces of high g planets? No. Looking away is not going to risk death approaching a planet. Boosting is not going to be a death sentence near the surface. If flying near the surface was that dangerous, canyon flying/races wouldn't be possible since nobody but the best of the best would be able to survive them.

Everything is a matter of comparison. If I boost by accident while doing a conflict zone, nothing changes. If I look away for five minutes, enemy eagles still won't have worn through my shields. If I get distracted by my pet or child while exploring, my ship could very easily ram into a mountain and die. If I'm scanning for bacterium and accidentally hit boost, I could ram into the ground and die.

Risk is relative, but exploration (and exobiology in particular) is more risky than most activities.

And people die canyon racing all the time! It just doesn't matter, because they don't lose anything when it happens.

I do say it's not dangerous.

Then what's your point? You seem to be making the case that the whole game isn't risky, in which case, nothing should reward anything. Why argue about it if, in your viewpoint, it doesn't matter anyway?

 

[DemiserofD]

I have no idea what you do when exploring in ED but it must be the polar opposite of me.

Absolutely possible. There are many people who explore just for the sake of exploration.

But to those people, credits don't matter either way, so it shouldn't make any difference to them.

 

[Darth Ender]

You absolutely can! It's most of what I do! You can judge the best nearby mass codes, you can efficiently plot to minimize time spent scooping, you can maximize your odds of finding good planets and, once you do, maximize the efficiency of your interplanetary travel! Exploration is ALL efficiency!

No, exploration has no other aspect other than time spent so the only measure you have available is time spent over profit made. It's not that efficiency is possible to maximize by some kind of made up prognostication you are presuming based on mass of systems. It's that efficiency is the only thing you have there to measure success by and so you start to think that you're doing exploration better if you shave off a few seconds scooping every star or a have a routine in finding the fuzzy blobs in signal sources and then picking the order you go in to scan them.

You know, like how people think when they're in traffic that if the go real fast and hop in different lanes that they'll get to their destination faster than someone just moving slowly in one lane and not thinking .. if you're both getting stuck behind traffic lights (the dearth of anything valuable in most systems and all of the time spent not making any credits) then you'll both get to the same place at roughly the same time.

Getting high rewards in exploration is not about optimizing ..it's about how much can you take watching the same loading screens, honking the same kind of systems, and spending all of your game play time just watching supercruise or hunting for a static model that's supposed to be an alien before abandoning the game for some other activity.

That's the opposite of the problem! The problem isn't trying to find out the best payouts in the game, the problem is knowing what are the highest payouts in the game. Players knew that LTD mining was the best way to make money, there was no alternative, so they felt pressured to do exclusively that.

This achieves the opposite of that, and lets players specialize in what they feel they do best or enjoy the most, or just do whatever their whimsy demands!

So is this like game design thru obscurity? It's not that the mechanics are bad and favors this behavior, it's that players know what the best activity is that's the problem?

no.

and exploration and xeno-biology do not solve any of those concerns. Nor is it specialization in any way (other than you need a special suit to have the scanner for xeno-biology). exploration doesn't require any skill besides patience and a lack of expectation.

To resolve reward balance in activities and roles in the game, you need a new way to measure and pay players other than time spent and credits.

There are numerous ways that can be done, but obscurity isn't one of them.

I don't disagree.... but Credits are a perfectly acceptable reward, too. And you find materials while you're out there, as well. What more could you reward players with?

But even if you are going to expand other rewards, there's no reason not to expand credit payouts, as well.

i'd be happy if they got rid of credits from the game altogether. They're worthless to most players who dont give up the game after their first month and dont really serve any purpose. Players only continue to pursue them out of the addictive nature of acquiring any reward that almost all people have and the vague hope that some new content will cost tons of credits that they'll be able to buy because they hoarded billions already.

it's a poor tool for balance because it's based in a fake economy that has infinite credits and infinite resources It offers an extremely limited means of creating balance because it's universally used across almost everything in the game

Ideally, i'd see credits put back to launch levels and on top of that, additional currency used in other areas for specific items / tasks. This could take the form of other kinds of money or just other types of collectable items. This narrows the focus of what this currency needs to be balanced for, so instead of trying to balance every role and activity and item cost to 1 currency ... you only need to balance 1-3 or so things to a given currency ... It's much more feasible and allows you to not create situations where drastically different things "cost the same" for no logical reason.

Everything is a matter of comparison. If I boost by accident while doing a conflict zone, nothing changes. If I look away for five minutes, enemy eagles still won't have worn through my shields. If I get distracted by my pet or child while exploring, my ship could very easily ram into a mountain and die. If I'm scanning for bacterium and accidentally hit boost, I could ram into the ground and die.

that's just proving my point that pve is not risky. not really helping your argument any.

Risk is relative, but exploration (and exobiology in particular) is more risky than most activities.

out of the many tens of thousands of different systems i've been in across 7 years with much of that spent out in the black exploring, i've never died once exploring. I've jumped into binary stars back when the jump in point could literally kill you on jump with no chance of knowing ahead of time or being able to plan around it... I've fallen asleep and i've scooped too close. Never died though. Saying that makes me the best explorer is like saying someone who spends all of their life walking and not dying from walking the best walker. Instead, it's probably just that walking is low risk.

And people die canyon racing all the time! It just doesn't matter, because they don't lose anything when it happens.

in your world, they'd all die the minute someone messaged them on their second monitor and they glanced away. No. it's not that dangerous. Yes, people die doing it, but they're purposely trying to create that risk by getting closer and closer to the surface while going faster and faster with fa/off. Absolutely none of that is required for xeno-biology or exploration. and that's basically what you have to do to make surface flying dangerous.

Then what's your point? You seem to be making the case that the whole game isn't risky, in which case, nothing should reward anything. Why argue about it if, in your viewpoint, it doesn't matter anyway?

it isn't risky. Almost none of it is risky and the parts that are are entirely optional and out of the way activities that dont really matter to the game. Most roles require no skill to do and offer no risk to the player while doing them unless they handicap themselves. There is a solution though, and it is highly related to how you balance the different roles and activities in the game and why it's so impossible to balance it now. You need skill based game mechanics living on top of the existing game mechanics so that time isn't the only means of controlling player progression in the game. And you need a varied currency (either direct and something the player gets or indirect and something that happens to the game that the player wants to happen) to reward players so that you aren't trying to find some way to balance everything in the game with a single one (which is not possible).

 

[DemiserofD]

You know, like how people think when they're in traffic that if the go real fast and hop in different lanes that they'll get to their destination faster than someone just moving slowly in one lane and not thinking .. if you're both getting stuck behind traffic lights (the dearth of anything valuable in most systems and all of the time spent not making any credits) then you'll both get to the same place at roughly the same time.

Getting high rewards in exploration is not about optimizing ..it's about how much can you take watching the same loading screens, honking the same kind of systems, and spending all of your game play time just watching supercruise or hunting for a static model that's supposed to be an alien before abandoning the game for some other activity.

Absolutely wrong. I've more than doubled my income by improving my efficiency. 'Stoplights' can be avoided or planned around, to use your metaphor. And traffic CAN be navigated around, moving past one car and another in the most optimum manner possible. And it's fun to do so!

If you don't find this fun, that's fine, but don't take away others fun just because it's not for you!

To resolve reward balance in activities and roles in the game, you need a new way to measure and pay players other than time spent and credits.

Well, we DO have a better metric; efficiency. You don't seem to want to believe it exists, but it absolutely does; I've more than doubled my credits per hour by improving it.

As far as paying players in credits is concerned, that's only irrelevant if you're a lategame player that doesn't care anymore. But that's not a problem with the game, so much as a problem with the player.

i'd be happy if they got rid of credits from the game altogether. They're worthless to most players

I think this is a problem of perspective. For 95% of players, credits are absolutely not meaningless. Most players spend most of their time trying to get them!

It's only to the biased sample you see here on the forums that credits are irrelevant, but we're NOT the players the game should be balanced around.

If you want to add additional rewards that are more useful to players like us, I'll support you 100%, but not at the cost of the noobier majority.

in your world, they'd all die the minute someone messaged them on their second monitor and they glanced away.

That's not at all what I'm saying!

They die, but it doesn't matter, so they don't care. An explorer dies, and they lose dozens or hundreds of hours of exploration data, so of course they're more careful and die less often! But that doesn't mean the risk and danger for an explorer isn't higher, the explorer just plays more carefully to compensate!

it isn't risky.

Again, you're making assessments based on playing the game in a way that's only possible based on having played it for years, but you then assume that your experience translates equally to everyone, which absolutely is not the case.

I'm sorry, but if this is honestly your standpoint, it sounds like this game just isn't for you anymore. You might be happier if you found something else, rather than beating down proposed tweaks just because they don't completely rebuild the game in a way more preferential to you.

 

[Darth Wonko]

You'll probably notice as you explore that the vast majority of players only FSS 95%+ of bodies, and DSS exclusively the most valuable. Very few players bother to fully DSS an entire system, and the ones who do certainly don't care about credits. I myself fall in the middle of the spectrum; I don't outright ignore cheaper bodies if given the opportunity to scan them, but I also won't go out of my way. I WOULD like to see the full system DSS bonus improved, as it's currently utterly garbage, but that's another topic.

That's a fair point. I fall somewhere in that middle alongside you. I'll FSS the whole system, and I DSS most everything, but when I see that Rocky Body out there 235,000ls away... well, that's when I think "You know... the first discovery for that is like 4,000 credits total... and I'm a billionaire.... so.... [FRAME SHIFT DRIVE CHARGING].". At that point, somehow my whole attitude becomes 'all about the credits, yo'.

I want to clarify that my experience of one terraformable per jump is averaged over a 50+ hour exploration journey. There were many, many systems where I found no terraformables at all, but also a fair few where I found 3-6. Overall, it balanced out.

Understood. Still, my experience was far different. But, that's one of things I think that makes it more difficult to make really meaningful payout projections for Exploration.

I would like to see biological signals as roughly akin to Metal-Rich worlds. Right now, a Terraformable is worth traveling to, and an earthlike definitely so, almost regardless of distance. By contrast, a metal-rich world is only worth about 300k-400k, making it an efficient investment of time only if it's less than about 15ls from the central star, or can be tagged along the way to a more valuable object. That, to me, would strike the correct balance for both explorers who will explore regardless of profit, and credit earners who are more interested in efficiency.

I think this is a good point. Life is so scarce in the galaxy (and I actually believe that to be true IRL), finding a planet with biological signals should make it inherently more valuable than finding one without. But, this wouldn't be a payout on the Exobiology part - it'd be a multiplier of the planet's reward. So, the question still becomes, "Is it worth it to go down there and scan some fungi?".

I would, however, like to point out that your math isn't quite right on your last calculation: If you're making 500k/minute exploring, and stop for 18 minutes to gain an additional 287k, then you'll have reduced your income per minute to (2000+287)/22=130k/minute. Remember, you need to take into account the opportunity cost of doing it. By doing exobiology, you sacrifice your ability to do exploration at the same time.

I'll go ahead and refer you to the aforementioned 'too lazy' thing.

Actually, I think I'd argue with you on the math a little, especially regarding the opportunity cost. But, I get your point.

You are typically playing in a very light and stripped-down ship, and every single landing you make in such a ship is a chance of death. And if you do die, you risk losing HUNDREDS of hours of gameplay from a single mistake.

I think this is a bit hyperbolic. I use a stripped-down DBX with a >68ly jump range and I've yet to die landing the thing. I did die once because I wasn't paying attention and got too close to the star when I was supercharging my FSD, but that's it. I know some folks run shieldless, but I find that to be foolhardy - on my build, it would get me something like 0.13ly on my jump range, so it's not worth the risk.

Unless you're nose-diving at full throttle on every landing with no shields and a cargo hold full of nitroglycerin, I don't see much danger.

Time efficiency is 100% the core of exploration. Yes, you see cool things, but at its core, it's about doing as much valuable stuff as possible, in the shortest possible amount of time. That IS exploration, from an income standpoint.

I think this is where the primary disconnect is between your view and those of some others. For me, exploration has nothing to do with time efficiency. It's actually kind of the opposite.

When ED forces me to grind High Grade Emissions signal sources until my eyeballs bleed, or I run the 3,000th iteration of the exact same settlement massacre mission trying to find a Settlement Defence Plan... well, that's all about time efficiency because I want to stop the madness as quickly as I can.

Exploration, to me, is all about not doing any of that.

Actually, the same is true for mining. I'll still go after the higher paying stuff, but laser mining an asteroid, watching it spin and while a swarm of limpets pick up the debris is very relaxing. I'm in no rush to get back to a station and sell it all.

To do exobiology, you must put yourself in danger by getting close to a planet, and even a single mistake in those cases can mean death.

Okay... so that is hyperbole to a ridiculous extreme. If that were the case, the forum would be full up with people winging about how FDev sucks and 'DOOM!' because everyone dies landing on planets all the time. Landing on a planet is trivial. Hell, there's more danger docking in a space station. At least a planet doesn't blow you out of the sky for hovering over a rock for too long.

I so wish they would develop long term exploration missions that ask for samples from unknown systems in X region with Y conditions. Bonus points if enough of those lead to new technology being unlocked overall or increased.

THIS!!!! Great idea!!! I'd love to see exploration actually impact BGS, Thargoid activity, etc.

"Well, CMDR phomankc went to Heebie-Jeebi XW 43-7 and now the Thargoids are attacking 37 systems."

 

[Darth Ender]

Absolutely wrong. I've more than doubled my income by improving my efficiency. 'Stoplights' can be avoided or planned around, to use your metaphor. And traffic CAN be navigated around, moving past one car and another in the most optimum manner possible. And it's fun to do so!

If you don't find this fun, that's fine, but don't take away others fun just because it's not for you!

Nobody is suggesting whatever currently exists not still exist as an activity. Some want the payout to be changed in various ways. I want the activity expanded upon so that a more sustainable balance can be had without impacting the existing gameplay that players may be choosing on purpose, rather than out of no other option existing.

Well, we DO have a better metric; efficiency. You don't seem to want to believe it exists, but it absolutely does; I've more than doubled my credits per hour by improving it.

As far as paying players in credits is concerned, that's only irrelevant if you're a lategame player that doesn't care anymore. But that's not a problem with the game, so much as a problem with the player.

Nobody said it doesn't exist. In fact, i said it was the major source of complaints from the game's minimalistic gameplay loops. Because all of the roles are effectively paid in the same manner, efficiency is what drives credit inflation and abusing windfalls that were designed to be hidden thru obscurity but never re-thougth after crowd sourcing all of the game data became common place.

Efficiency isn't a good game design mechanic. It's akin to speed running a game. The purpose of the game shouldn't be to play it the least amount of time. It should be to want to play it all of the time. You're arguing that the goal of any role should be to do it as fast as possible so you can eliminate the cost effect of credits as much as possible ...i guess so you can then play the game the way you want ? If that's your argument then why not just argue to eliminate credits altogether? That would get you what you want without wasting time.

Efficiency at best, should be treated as a bonus, but at the expense of missing out on other interesting rewards / items / storylines. It's not a good design goal for a game mechanic and not something that has helped this game when it comes to gameplay - as we see with every single stupid credit meta it's ever had.

I think this is a problem of perspective. For 95% of players, credits are absolutely not meaningless. Most players spend most of their time trying to get them!

Dont confuse wanting to get a shiny reward like credits with actually needing them. Unless you want a carrier, anything over a few hundred million credits is not necessary and it's ridiculously easy to get that. Even a billion credits is nothing. Most players are getting credits just to get credits because that's all you can really get and getting higher numbers in games is addictive.

It's only to the biased sample you see here on the forums that credits are irrelevant, but we're NOT the players the game should be balanced around.

If you want to add additional rewards that are more useful to players like us, I'll support you 100%, but not at the cost of the noobier majority.

These newbs that may make up the majority of players at any given time dont remain. They shift in and out ..why? because unlike us, once they've eliminated the value of credits by making too much, bought all of the ships....they see nothing else worth doing. No point to doing any activity. Even powerplay is just pointless repetition for no change in the game.

This is where making the roles matter in unique ways that reward players for participation in indirect ways thru making changes in the BGS matter. Instead of capping out what you can get and do with credits and becoming bored, your activity might alter the bgs in permanent ways. Players like that kind of impact. Players like having agency in games, seeing that their actions have meaning to it. Newbs and old players become much more invested in what they're doing because they're not just chasing a larger number for no point.

That's not at all what I'm saying!

They die, but it doesn't matter, so they don't care. An explorer dies, and they lose dozens or hundreds of hours of exploration data, so of course they're more careful and die less often! But that doesn't mean the risk and danger for an explorer isn't higher, the explorer just plays more carefully to compensate!

The explorer just plays normal and always survives. The daredevil playing canyon racer is purposely looking for the line where the game becomes risky and going over it.

If exploration required any kind of need to approach that line then you'd have a defendable position there. But scanning non-interactive items and watching loading screens and repeating the same exact things over and over is not risky...not skillful and certainly not something someone has to be careful doing.

Again, you're making assessments based on playing the game in a way that's only possible based on having played it for years, but you then assume that your experience translates equally to everyone, which absolutely is not the case.

you dont need to play the game for years to make credits worthless, you just need to play it for a few dozen hours. Once credits are worthless because you have so many the idea of fixing things people find unbalanced or broken with shuffling credit rewards around is not just pointless, but willfully blind to what has been going on in the game for years.

I'm sorry, but if this is honestly your standpoint, it sounds like this game just isn't for you anymore. You might be happier if you found something else, rather than beating down proposed tweaks just because they don't completely rebuild the game in a way more preferential to you.

If the proposed tweak is to change credit amounts then it deserves to be beaten down. Because it's a bad idea that wont solve the problem. And the idea that the game is seriously lacking risk and tests of skill is not my standpoint, it's an observation that has been made since it was launched. it's a common complaint with npcs. it's a common source for saying that the game is a mile wide and an inch deep. It's just the way the game is and has been. But there's always the chance that it could change too. And the forum is here to chatter back and forth about things that will never happen or might happen (probably never). And that's often more fun than the actual reality of playing the game.

 

[DemiserofD]

I broadly agree with everything you said. Only this stood out:

I think this is a bit hyperbolic. I use a stripped-down DBX with a >68ly jump range and I've yet to die landing the thing. I did die once because I wasn't paying attention and got too close to the star when I was supercharging my FSD, but that's it. I know some folks run shieldless, but I find that to be foolhardy - on my build, it would get me something like 0.13ly on my jump range, so it's not worth the risk.

Unless you're nose-diving at full throttle on every landing with no shields and a cargo hold full of nitroglycerin, I don't see much danger.

The thing about a chance of death is, it doesn't HAVE to happen to still matter. It's a matter of comparison; if I'm flying in supercruise in a standard system, the only way I could POSSIBLY die is if I fall asleep and run out of fuel. I can(and do) go afk for prolonged periods of time with absolutely no fear of danger.

By contrast, doing that near a planet is much more risky. If someone bumps your mouse or keyboard, you could easily come back to a rebuy screen. Does it happen often? No. But it's possible, and the potential losses are enormous.

That's what people don't really give credit about exploration, I think. Do people die often? No, but only because the potential loses ON death are so high, people never take chances they might take otherwise.

 

[Chaparral]

I think the way to remedy this would be to offer substantial collection completion bonuses within a category. 100 million per category or more depending on rarity/category distribution.

 

[DemiserofD]

you dont need to play the game for years to make credits worthless, you just need to play it for a few dozen hours. Once credits are worthless because you have so many the idea of fixing things people find unbalanced or broken with shuffling credit rewards around is not just pointless, but willfully blind to what has been going on in the game for years.

The average player in elite(according to FDev's statistics) plays the game for less than 60 hours. Considering that average gets driven up by the long-term players, it's probably fair to say that most players never get even a few hundred million credits, and never experience the problems you're highlighting. So the changes I'm proposing would be beneficial to the vast majority of players, while at worst sustaining a gameplay model you don't agree with, but which has not been changed in a decade, and seems unlikely to be changed anytime soon.

If you want to make a thread about why credits are bad as a whole and should be rebalanced en-masse, I would completely support you making a dedicated thread about that topic. But would you mind not dragging it in here, where it's not really relevant?

 

[Darth Ender]

The average player in elite(according to FDev's statistics) plays the game for less than 60 hours. Considering that average gets driven up by the long-term players, it's probably fair to say that most players never get even a few hundred million credits, and never experience the problems you're highlighting. So the changes I'm proposing would be beneficial to the vast majority of players, while at worst sustaining a gameplay model you don't agree with, but which has not been changed in a decade, and seems unlikely to be changed anytime soon.

If you want to make a thread about why credits are bad as a whole and should be rebalanced en-masse, I would completely support you making a dedicated thread about that topic. But would you mind not dragging it in here, where it's not really relevant?

If you dont think it's relevant then you're blind. If you dont wonder why roles are always in a state of lopsidedness in reward and dont think it has anything to do with trying to reward players with the same exact reward doing bounty hunting as they get staring at a plant on a planet then you're being obtuse.

My points aren't that we need to throw out credits to fix the issue and re-do the entire economy of the game. That would be nice, but it's not necessary to fix xeno-biology and balance it. Besides actually having gameplay, the next best thing you would want to do for xeno biology that would balance it without having to shuffle credits around in a futile attempt at balance with other roles doing vastly different activities is create a currency / reward only available thru xeno-biology.

With this unique reward, that is valuable in some way to the player or to the bgs/game ...you can balance time (since xeno-biology has no gameplay currently) to reward without impacting how credits are leveraged in any other existing role. This encourages participating in xeno-biology without having to leverage the horrible crutch of credits by creating an efficiency drive towards it or at least neutral to it.



The average player doesn't play the game long enough for the intricacies of the game to wear on them. they abandon it because of any number of reasons related to repetitive gameplay, or lack of social tools or just complicated steep learning curve or nothing really going on in the game. Those people are going to leave the game no matter how much xeno biology is balanced or not. We dont care about the average player who peaces out for reasons that have no hope of changing in the game. because they're not quitting the game over xeno biology not paying enough credits. We care about the average player who is willing to play longer. They're invested enough to know what xeno biology is ...and continue wanting to play after finding out it's just staring at a unresponsive image. You're not going to retain newbie players because you gave them more credits.

 

[DemiserofD]

If you dont think it's relevant then you're blind. If you dont wonder why roles are always in a state of lopsidedness in reward and dont think it has anything to do with trying to reward players with the same exact reward doing bounty hunting as they get staring at a plant on a planet then you're being obtuse.

My points aren't that we need to throw out credits to fix the issue and re-do the entire economy of the game. That would be nice, but it's not necessary to fix xeno-biology and balance it. Besides actually having gameplay, the next best thing you would want to do for xeno biology that would balance it without having to shuffle credits around in a futile attempt at balance with other roles doing vastly different activities is create a currency / reward only available thru xeno-biology.

With this unique reward, that is valuable in some way to the player or to the bgs/game ...you can balance time (since xeno-biology has no gameplay currently) to reward without impacting how credits are leveraged in any other existing role. This encourages participating in xeno-biology without having to leverage the horrible crutch of credits by creating an efficiency drive towards it or at least neutral to it.



The average player doesn't play the game long enough for the intricacies of the game to wear on them. they abandon it because of any number of reasons related to repetitive gameplay, or lack of social tools or just complicated steep learning curve or nothing really going on in the game. Those people are going to leave the game no matter how much xeno biology is balanced or not. We dont care about the average player who peaces out for reasons that have no hope of changing in the game. because they're not quitting the game over xeno biology not paying enough credits. We care about the average player who is willing to play longer. They're invested enough to know what xeno biology is ...and continue wanting to play after finding out it's just staring at a unresponsive image. You're not going to retain newbie players because you gave them more credits.

Roles aren't lopsided right now! Right now, you can make good money doing just about anything you want! I can mine, I can bounty hunt, I can do AX combat, I can even explore(with the LYR bonus), and get rewards that are at least on the same order of magnitude. I think the game is remarkably well balanced at the moment, barring a few exceptions like piracy, and exobiology, which just need slight upwards tweaking.

Unique rewards, in my opinion, only make the issue worse. The issue with unique rewards is, it can make players feel forced to engage in gameplay they don't enjoy. I don't want anyone to do xenobiology unless they already are interested in doing it.

 

[Darth Ender]

Roles aren't lopsided right now! Right now, you can make good money doing just about anything you want! I can mine, I can bounty hunt, I can do AX combat, I can even explore(with the LYR bonus), and get rewards that are at least on the same order of magnitude. I think the game is remarkably well balanced at the moment, barring a few exceptions like piracy, and exobiology, which just need slight upwards tweaking.

Unique rewards, in my opinion, only make the issue worse. The issue with unique rewards is, it can make players feel forced to engage in gameplay they don't enjoy. I don't want anyone to do xenobiology unless they already are interested in doing it.

Foot gameplay deals with items / crafting, missions, and certain rewards that are foot specific. Yet it doesn't force players to play foot stuff if they dont want to while they're puttering around in space ships - and vice versa.

Similarly, roles can be isolated in these unique rewards allowing their rewards to be internally balanced with the given role without impacting the value associated with any other role because it's not leveraging a common currency as the means of reward. This doesn't force players to play things they dont want, it just allows you to set the rewards based on the specific activity that gives them without affecting anything else or allowing players to circumvent your game loop doing something easier and exploiting the mechanic or devaluing something you did elsewhere that was harder.

By restricting the rewards to credits and jacking up the credits here, you devalue the "effort" any more difficult role may have and limit what the game can encourage players into doing because players will generally do what is easiest for the most profit.

The idea that you can get comparatively rewarded Exploring in the current implementation of exploring is not balanced when you compare it to something like say thargoid hunting, which tends to require actually being good at something to succeed. It devalues the activity of something requiring some amount of skill when you can make equivalent credits doing something that doesn't require any. And if the idea is that you should make equal money doing everything because everyone should be happy doing whatever they want and be able to sustain their gameplay doing that thing and potentially only that thing, then the real goal then is to eliminate costs in the game altogether. The player motivation isn't to make credits, it's just to do what you want for the joy of doing that activity. Credits simply become a completely unnecessary and irrelevant barrier that holds no purpose to players who've played more than a month and uselessly punishes new players when they are most vulnerable to abandoning the game before spending a bunch of arx.


I would envision roles like exploration rewarding explorers internally in ways that are valuable in purchasing or upgrading or crafting things useful to explorers and effectively only explorers. This allows the reward and cost to be balanced internally and fairly for that role without needing to worry about being balanced against the rewards given to bounty hunting, thargoid killing, trading or mining etc. This eliminates the issues involved with credit metas (there would be none) and it would eliminate concerns about roles being more profitable than another (that wouldn't be a thing that is possible) and it would eliminate needing to worry about game mechanic balance between roles reflecting profits because the cost and rewards would all be internally balanced in each role and only have to reflect the local difficulty of that role's tasks. Simple, clean, intuitive and easy to maintain balance over time, especially if game loops are ever added to the existing mechanics.

 

[DemiserofD]

Foot gameplay deals with items / crafting, missions, and certain rewards that are foot specific.

Yes - but it also pays in credits. And a fair bit of them, too.

By restricting the rewards to credits and jacking up the credits here, you devalue the "effort" any more difficult role may have and limit what the game can encourage players into doing because players will generally do what is easiest for the most profit.

I'm not talking about making it more profitable; I actually intentionally tried to make it slightly less profitable. The idea isn't to make it the best option, just to make it not so bad an option players feel pressure not to do it.

The idea that you can get comparatively rewarded Exploring in the current implementation of exploring is not balanced when you compare it to something like say thargoid hunting, which tends to require actually being good at something to succeed.

I'm not sure Thargoids are the best example. Not when the two best ways to make significant credits via thargoids are 1: Gibbing Cyclopses(which takes no skill), and 2: Group AX combat, which likewise takes basically no skill as long as you have enough players.

Actually doing the skillful bits of thargoid content aren't particularly profitable.

Fundamentally, rewarding players for skillful gameplay is a good thing, to a point. But skill comes in a broad variety of aspects. Combat skill is not the only relevant skill, and, for example, being able to identify the most likely place on a planet for an exobio to spawn, getting down as quickly as possible without crashing, swooping near the surface without crashing, landing efficiently, etc, are all skill-based actions that should be adequately rewarded. Especially since an explorer who dies loses vastly more than an AX pilot who dies.

There are explorers who make a million credits an hour, and ones(like myself) who can make upwards of 80m/hour. What else explains that difference but skill?

Don't diss skill just because it's not a skill you appreciate or enjoy.

I would envision roles like exploration rewarding explorers internally in ways that are valuable in purchasing or upgrading or crafting things useful to explorers and effectively only explorers.

This doesn't work, because the game isn't JUST about exploration. I don't do exploration so I can do MORE exploration; I do it so that, when I get done, I can go do OTHER things instead! Indeed, exploration rewards are the LAST thing I want while exploring! Even ignoring the fact that there's no real way to make a reward that's ONLY functional for exploring. Even the engineered detailed surface scanner lets me do odyssey content substantially faster. An engineered FSD would be even worse. That would essentially force ALL players to do exploration.

Here's the thing about players; players want PROGRESSION. That's why credits are such an awesome system; because they create a clearly identifiable metric by which progression can be measured. And the simpler that system, the better. The reason players quit after 60 hours is because they feel like they've finished the game, and in many ways, they're right! They have the credits to buy everything the game has to offer. They may not have improved their skills to the max, but most people simply don't care about that. Not everyone who plays Skyrim feels the need to perfect their archery or spellcasting aim, or their dodging abilities, or become as good as possible at traveling. They just want that Daedric Armor and to kill Alduin, and poof! They've gotten their progression and satisfaction from the game.

You can try to replace that with other systems, but I'm inclined to think all you'll really do is take away that initial sense of progression, that goal they can aim for, and end up with players playing even less than they currently do. I certainly wouldn't have played as long as I have, if I didn't have that progression bait of the Corvette waiting for me. I just happened to stick around afterwards, but not everyone - heck, not even MOST people - will do that.

And that's okay!

Look, if you want to invent a second currency explicitly for exploration, I'll support you 100% of the way. More content for experienced players is all gravy at this point. But that bonus content, just like Odyssey content, doesn't mean you shouldn't pay players fairly, using that good old standby; credits.