I'm obliged to admit.....

Denneb

D
...that only open-play could have saved the game's economy from such bad design decisions, as mining profitability is. And this is coming from a solo player with an OPEN / PG ratio of 20 / 6000 at most.

FDev, contrary to its CEO's wish, made it possible and let it be such for months, that miners could amass literally trillions, and now the economy is totally broken. In a day, mining became a career path that is hundreds of times more profitable than any other. And, instead of balancing the professions, they decided to introduce obscenely expensive toys (FCs) that only miners could easily buy and maintain, essentially forcing susceptible players to mine against their will.
Those are without doubt bad design decisions.
But in an open game with truly emergent game play, we wouldn't have to rely on developers to balance such things. Even if mining was a hundred times more profitable, miners would have a harder time taking advantage of gold rushes, with all those player pirates/outlaws flying around. And that applies to all career paths of course, not to mention the BGS and powerplay, that by design only work in open. A plain realism that imho adds to the immersion, and eventually brings an equilibrium to the game, making it almost bulletproof to bad developer decisions.

I know this has been exhaustively discussed before, and that Elite will probably never be an open-only game, because of its player base. But seeing this year's decline due to the mining fiasco, I just wanted to get it out of my chest, and possibly hear a few opinions.
Thanks for your time commanders. I wont say "fly safe" cause you can already do that in solo :p
 

VR Jay Le Chardon

VR Jay Le Chardon
hoodav thunk mixing mining's borked with oapan oanly wooduv wurk'd so well together...?

Whew - back to real English now, but nice mix on two topics into a palatable mashup, but being honest with you, I don't even think a swarm of thargoid mother ships could have saved the economy once they opened that mongo-design Low Temp Diamond credit flood gate.
 

CMDR Tony

C
No, ED 1.0 will probably never be open-only. But we have to keep on hammering on it if for no other reason than to prevent ED 2.0 from becoming another carebear cuddlefest like ED 1.0 is.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Denneb said:
...that only open-play could have saved the game's economy from such bad design decisions, as mining profitability is. And this is coming from a solo player with an OPEN / PG ratio of 20 / 6000 at most.

FDev, contrary to its CEO's wish, made it possible and let it be such for months, that miners could amass literally trillions, and now the economy is totally broken. In a day, mining became a career path that is hundreds of times more profitable than any other. And, instead of balancing the professions, they decided to introduce obscenely expensive toys (FCs) that only miners could easily buy and maintain, essentially forcing susceptible players to mine against their will.
Those are without doubt bad design decisions.
But in an open game with truly emergent game play, we wouldn't have to rely on developers to balance such things. Even if mining was a hundred times more profitable, miners would have a harder time taking advantage of gold rushes, with all those player pirates/outlaws flying around. And that applies to all career paths of course, not to mention the BGS and powerplay, that by design only work in open. A plain realism that imho adds to the immersion, and eventually brings an equilibrium to the game, making it almost bulletproof to bad developer decisions.

I know this has been exhaustively discussed before, and that Elite will probably never be an open-only game, because of its player base. But seeing this year's decline due to the mining fiasco, I just wanted to get it out of my chest, and possibly hear a few opinions.
Thanks for your time commanders. I wont say "fly safe" cause you can already do that in solo :p
Click to expand...
Actually, by all accounts there were plenty of miners, mining in open, who were happily making their fortunes despite pirate activity. So no, "Lack of Open Only" has nothing to do with the broken economy.

What broke the economy was having a mineable item which was:
  • More common than bauxite (thanks hotspot mechanics), and yet
  • Worth 10,000% more than bauxite, by some crazy logic.
 

Malcolm Tucker

Malcolm Tucker
SWTOR player driven economy - massive hyperinflation

Star Trek Online - player driven economy, see SWTOR

If I played several more MMOs I can say with confidence that they'd be the same. Why? Players are greedy, so those with billions dictate the prices, which will be astronomical.

I'm all for dynamic economies but absolutely not player driven.
 
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Jmanis

Jmanis
Malcolm Tucker said:
SWTOR player driven economy - massive hyperinflation

Star Trek Online - player driven economy, see SWTOR

If I played several more MMOs I can say with confidence that they'd be the same. Why? Players are greedy, so those with billions dictate the prices, which will be astronomical.
Click to expand...
Actually, EVE's market makes a lot of sense, and there's no hyperinflation in that except for the genuinely rare items. Hypercapitalist, yes, hyperinflated? No.

A key part of this is that if constituent parts of things cost more than the item itself, it just becomes more cost effective to buy up and scrap items... and those constituent parts are generality easy to come by.

I don't know about SWTOR, but ED simply doesn't have the structure in place for a player market to work. The only item with player demand is tritium and maybe thargoid/ guardian items, though that's non enduring demand.
 
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CMDR DragonHorn

CMDR DragonHorn
Few points:
Economy doesn't exist in ED, period. I don't want to type long articles, but you can easily find this out yourself and even get a hint if you ever dipped toes in trading without much of a research.

If there was economy, it would be pretty hard to maintain, even in open-only environment, because practice shows that ED is highly exploitable game in itself, and devs don't really care much about it.

As for open having some risks, please... It would require to freaking re-code entire game, so ridiculous exploits won't go rampant on both sides, and devs won't do that even if their life was depending on it. I'm speaking about combat logging, blocking, situations where one virtually cannot avoid being killed. There are absolutely no tools for regulation, absolutely no balance in terms of combat (special thanks to engineering), so particular players would be at high disadvantage. Hell, game doesn't even have mild level of Crime & Punishment system. When you speak about risks, there should ways to regulate it. There are none in the game.

PP is another potentially amazing layer of Elite, but as of right now, it's pure grind and doesn't really make any sense in bigger picture. Whole system needs some serious overhauls to be viable and fun at least... If it was open-only it wouldn't really make things better, but it would make more sense.

In conclusion, I'd say they really need to rename this game into Elite - Mostly Harmless, because knowing some tricks, and if you don't hang in ganker systems 24/7, there's really no risk to fly in Open at all. Frankly, you won't even see anyone for months, and I'm not even speaking about exploration. However, game would really shine in true offline mode. It would magically get real and working economy, something devs with BGS refuse to take any advantage of, and "flying safe" would have real meaning behind it, because, believe me, making game really dangerous, without alive players present, isn't all that hard.
 
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Clarion-Z

Clarion-Z
Game economy broke in latter half of 2018... Prices in most part are good. Even the 5bill fleet carrier. Every profession just pays a lot of credits for nothign at the moment, mining just being stupidly insane. Making credits was never that hard in Elite and now the hard part is avoid making credits.
Currently, you cannot lose in Elite. No matter how bad of a pilot you are.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Clarion-Z said:
Game economy broke in latter half of 2018... Prices in most part are good. Even the 5bill fleet carrier. Every profession just pays a lot of credits for nothign at the moment, mining just being stupidly insane. Making credits was never that hard in Elite and now the hard part is avoid making credits.
Currently, you cannot lose in Elite. No matter how bad of a pilot you are.
Click to expand...
It's because the money spinning activities are all so static in nature. For a game priding itself in the procedurally generated, it really discourages that, and highly encourages sitting static, doing the one thing over and over.
 

Hooplah

Hooplah
Your are good hands with Allstate..Still Frontier has issues to quit nerfing the game every time something good comes along and several thousands of players get into the game enjoying it. Then with 4 patches they nerf it and who knows what patch 5 will fix or not. I wonder why does Frontier hate players across the world playing together, enjoying the game often in Open mode, getting excited playing with each other even using their ARX. Then taking away what we players love playing together is their answer? Are they trying to hate players in the game or getting them to play together? Personally the Frontier PR department should kick a few butts with the programming department making ED an awesome game generating billions of profits. Screw the balance. Let players enjoy the game. Work on it.

Meanwhile I just spent $90.00 on the Embarer family of 5 jets for X-Plane 11. They are much more complicated from a cold start, programming the flight computers, adding in all the way points, and landing at the last moment turning off the auto-pilot. ED doesn't compare to real world flight aircraft but I ALWAYS know what to expect when I buy them. All it takes is learning how to fly them.

ED and Fleet Carriers? It changes with every patch. Maybe that is why X-Plane 11 got my $90.00 and ED didn't. You do the math. I get solutions with X-Plane II. ED with credits we never get an answer.

Regards
 
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[Diplomacy] Carnegie

[Diplomacy] Carnegie
Jmanis said:
It's because the money spinning activities are all so static in nature. For a game priding itself in the procedurally generated, it really discourages that, and highly encourages sitting static, doing the one thing over and over.
Click to expand...

Yep, this exactly.
Mission payouts depending on reputation
HGEs depending on faction state
Jameson crash and Davs Hope lack of persistence
Asteroid persistence

I'm surprised FDev haven't figured out a way to make exploration pay more for scanning the same system over and over again
 
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