I think I know what the problem might be...

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Care to tell me what that something is? I was about 800 hours into the game when I first started doing the Smeaton runs, and the activities available to me up to that point were limited by the ships I could afford, which in turn were limited by credits I could make. But I did every type of mission that was available to me until then, so what did I miss?

My bad - never estimate a Cmdr's play time from his forum rank

My particular 'somethings' are exploration, driving the SRV and some BGS manipulation. None of these have every been limited by my credit balance - at least not to the extent that I'd need billions of credits to do them. When those start to get 'samey' I can investigate the Guardians/Thargoids or just play hobo around the Bubble in a Cobra, never visiting the same system twice.

For other people, all of that could be considered 'nothing', and that's fine, but if the fact that I can spend thousands of hours doing all that nothing shows more 'respect' for my time than cramming more content into a smaller space and having me exhaust it in a week.

 

[Finn638]

My bad - never estimate a Cmdr's play time from his forum rank

My particular 'somethings' are exploration, driving the SRV and some BGS manipulation. None of these have every been limited by my credit balance - at least not to the extent that I'd need billions of credits to do them. When those start to get 'samey' I can investigate the Guardians/Thargoids or just play hobo around the Bubble in a Cobra, never visiting the same system twice.

For other people, all of that could be considered 'nothing', and that's fine, but if the fact that I can spend thousands of hours doing all that nothing shows more 'respect' for my time than cramming more content into a smaller space and having me exhaust it in a week.

Oh yeah, I totally agree, there are several activities that are different in nature from the mission grind. My trouble was that those activities weren't readily accessible to me because of the limited number of ships and modules I could afford (only had A rated python and Asp X so I would have to sell/buy role-specific ships to try something new), or I was unaware those options existed. In hindsight I could have made different choices in my gameplay to make it more entertaining, but that's only now that I know what options there are.

I dabbled in some exploration along the way, but at first it didn't seem very engaging (I tried it again later and found it more interesting); and flew to other stations, but they just had more of the same missions. And though I heard about Thargoids, I had no idea where they were until much later. That's not to say that all of it was grind and misery, the missions did have decent entertainment value, but only for so long. The whole game really opened up to me once I had a ship for every role and could do every single type of activity without a worry. Then I went exploring, unlocking engineers, found Thargoids, and could vary my gameplay any way I please. So yeah, there are some activities that don't require a lot of credits, I just didn't see those options or found credit farming more deserving of my attention at the time.

Though I still insist that being a billionare and being able to do everything in the game is more enjoyable than having to choose between specific activities because you don't have the credits to do them all.

 

[Aashenfox]

I think it's clear by now isn't it? The entire missions system is so intertwined with itself they simply cannot make a change here without it messing up something over there. Even the devs have said the mission maker they use is limited and can't really do anything that complex iirc - so this could literally be all that you'll see from it. It's been nerf here breaks payouts there since launch and 3 years later - not fixed so they can't fix it. You can't bug fix for 3 years and not fix the bugs - that's how long it took to code the entire game!

Scary isn't it.

Elite 2 (again) anyone?

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Though I still insist that being a billionare and being able to do everything in the game is more enjoyable than having to choose between specific activities because you don't have the credits to do them all.

and you are absolutely not wrong... for you... however for me part of the enjoyment of the game is actually weighing up what i want to do and deciding a loadout to do it, in a cost vs benefit kind of thing. being able to just A rate everything and pick the best ship all the time removes much of the satisfaction i get out of the game.

its not that you are wrong, neither am i. FD have the unenyable job of trying to appease us both. the fact that in general gameplay neither of us are fully happy may mean they are on the right track.

 

[Ted Striker]

I have no problem with credit balancing fixes, the missions system needs balancing.

I however really despise the nerf-to-the-ground approach that Fdev applies most of the time.

Balancing is a delicate task, not something that needs whacked with a sledge hammer.

They overnerfed Smeaton. Maybe a 50% reduction would have sufficed. It is a long and tedious trip especially for people who actually have lives, work, family etc.

I was very happy when I found Smeaton (before it became public) and made billions. It was boring as hell. As if playing videogames isn't enough of a time waster, doing Smeaton runs was like the ultimate waste of your life's precious remaining minutes and hours.

I might have still done the runs if they were nerfed 50%. I can set a timer and go get something done in my apartment while flying. Now it's not worth ever going there again. They overnerfed it.

 

[m0rl0ck]

Actually i just figured out whats so infuriating about this game by playing a different one.
Fired up X3tc, never did the humble merchant start because i prefer combat oriented careers, and about 20 minutes into the game i engaged autopilot to dock at a station to sell some ore.
I had time acceleration set to 1000 and my ship ran into the dock and exploded, and i thought "Oh right, thats a known issue with time acceleration set that high, i will just reload and start back at the station"

Elite dangerous otoh is a new kind of broken after every patch so there is no getting used to the bugs and problems or finding ways around them. The only certainty with ED is that what worked yesterday might be completely broken after the next patch and when that does happen, its infuriating.
So its not complicated, they promise "we are going to fix X in the next patch" and then you discover that they broke Y doing it.

For instance, the patch broke asassination missions, one of my favorites and restored a new neutered version of skimmer missions with the gamey mechanic of having to land your ship first to destroy them as we once could.
Since skimmer missions and asassination missions were about 50% of my gameplay about half of ED mission content is just gone from my perspective.

In another thread a QA person said, about the broken asassination missions, that they were working as intended and then backtracked and said yes, they are broken, but he was right the first time.
ED being about half broken is in fact working as intended, or at least as normal, for ED.
The key to being happy with ED is lowering ones expectations.

 

[Hpotter3769]

It's not "gold rushes", it's "bugs". Bugs get fixed, suck it up and be glad you don't get punished for bug abuse like you would be in other online games.

The skimmer gold rush wasn't a bug...commodity rewards giving you the goods to complete other missions in an endless chain wasn't a bug, it was an overlooked side effect....the payouts on early passenger missions weren't bugged, they were written that way and then rewritten....which gold rush was actually a problematic 'bug' again? Cause from what I've seen, every gold rush so far has been an exploit, not a bug. And btw...freelance pirating USED to make me 40-60 mil CR an hour. Now, with the power plant BUG that has yet to be addressed, (and a few various other small technical difficulties stemming from the recent updates) I'm lucky if I pull 20 mil CR an hour. And I wasn't even using an exploit and only pirating NPC's.

 

[Ted Striker]

Smeaton was not a bug. It was working exactly as coded. It was simply the worst case scenario (for them. For us it was best case). The farther away the station is from the drop-in point the larger the payout, and Smeaton is damned far.

 

[Hpotter3769]

Smeaton was not a bug. It was working exactly as coded. It was simply the worst case scenario (for them. For us it was best case). The farther away the station is from the drop-in point the larger the payout, and Smeaton is damned far.

Hutton, same situation. To my knowledge that one has yet to encounter the nerfbat....I would imagine (and hope) though that it stays the way it is, given the SC flight time. But I know I made around 46 mil CR on my best run there.

 

[Vasco Sapien]

It's not "gold rushes", it's "bugs". Bugs get fixed, suck it up and be glad you don't get punished for bug abuse like you would be in other online games.

Hear, Hear.

 

[znôrt]

be glad you don't get punished for bug abuse like you would be in other online games.

yeah, i would totally love to see frontier doing just that: punishing players for their own incompetence. what could possibly go wrong?

dude, there's a reason frontier hardly bans anyone. what other online games? eve? give me eve grade delivery quality and gameplay design and i'm happy to have every single exploiter permabanned. (just for the record, i don't exploit).

frontier just doesn't have the authority to do that. it would be a riot, and rightly so. so stop these stupid threats and attitude, solves nothing. (and just for the record, i don't care about exploits, but a majority does).