Instead of nerf rares, how about buff other activities for merits?

[Sneake Llama]

Rare trading FELT great. It was popular because why would I spend a 15 minute loop of dropping off power commodities for not even 100 merits?

Players DO NOT want to spend a tug of war that takes MONTHS just to change a state from fortified to stronghold, or fortified to exploited.

Players don't want to spend a year just to get HALF of the power modules available.

But that's where these nerfs are heading.

It's going to get stale if the progress on PowerPlay system takes too long. PP2. has great potential, but you are going to kill it if you make merit gains a trickle for the work involved.

Summary, please, don't nerf merit gains into the ground. We have seen record number of returning players. If you keep on this nerf course, it's not just returning players that are going to leave again.

 

[Sublime]

Because buffing activities doesn’t contribute to grind, and grind is the only way that FDEV knows to provide “gameplay”.

 

[jacklul]

Just one week passed.
Give the devs some time to analyze the stats and data so they can balance it correctly.

 

[Sublime]

It’s funny how they just go gung ho on nerfing and disabling everything though, without taking the time to “analyze the stats and data” first.

 

[GroG79]

Funny how have zero evidence but just swing the Nerf hammer....

I am looking forward to a response from Fdev on what happend/happens

 

[Ozric]

The amount of merits/profit for trading rare goods is the same, correct?
Thousands of Cmdrs have spent a week hammering the same small number of rare goods, because they all follow the same advice, correct?
The supply of those specific rare goods has now dropped, in the same way that repeatedly hammering the same market for the same commodity has always worked, correct?

And this is now called nerfing because..?

Just be glad rare goods lasted longer than normal goods at a CG do.

 

[Fixitman]

This is getting old, blaming FDev for a natural occurrence.

Rares weren't nerfed. They dried up due to high demand. That's how a living economy works.

 

[kofeyh]

There are still systems in boom with rares. Just gotta move.

Is the supply as good as last week? No. But that's how boom states work. It can create outliers with much higher supply.

I don't think frontier has adjusted supply. If they did, it wasn't by much. More likely the BGS just cranked the states due to unprecedented demand.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The supply of those specific rare goods has now dropped, in the same way that repeatedly hammering the same market for the same commodity has always worked, correct?

I'm going to say "probably incorrect" on this one, I think. Conventional goods, sure, you can kill most markets at least in theory by buying the goods up faster than they regenerate.

But rares? I don't recall anyone seeing rares do this in the past. Rares CGs have never reported a problem with the allocation reducing during the week (except on BGS state changes, of course [1]) and the reported symptom - the fixed allocation was always X, and it is now always Y - doesn't match at all what you'd see with over-traded conventional goods either, where you'd get a range of values between X and Y through luck of the draw. The traffic levels I was seeing in systems like Orrere last week were high but not way above what you'd expect for a busy CG system, say.

It's also a bit odd to see over-saturation symptoms happening on the (usually) quietest mid-week days, at (usually) quieter times of those days, rather than at the weekend. That could just have been burning through an incredibly large background stockpile and it happened to run out now ... but in that case it would be an incredible coincidence for multiple giant stockpiles to run out close enough together to be reported near-simultaneously.


[1] Which also aren't the case for at least some of the systems in question - some haven't changed state at all for the station controlling faction for the entire week, and many of the allocation drops were reported substantially different from the tick time (currently around 0230)

 

[Markov Chaney - Dormant]

The amount of merits/profit for trading rare goods is the same, correct?
Thousands of Cmdrs have spent a week hammering the same small number of rare goods, because they all follow the same advice, correct?
The supply of those specific rare goods has now dropped, in the same way that repeatedly hammering the same market for the same commodity has always worked, correct?

Yes, that explains Rare Goods specifically. It doesn't explain why the merit-to-goal ratio for everything else is... aggressive. I'm trying really hard not to use the word "grind."

And this is now called nerfing because..?

I think people are referring to how the whole thing has arrived pre-nerfed.

Rare Goods was accidentally useful for a while. Exploration data was disabled for whatever reason. And everything else is a lot of work to progress.

That is actually what this thread was about, per the title OP chose - NOT the Rare Goods issue.

Nerf probably isn't the right word, agreed, but perhaps we should be discussing the issue - which is an issue - rather than dismissing it out of hand? You'll know from my posting history I'm quite happy to tell people to stop moaning when they're moaning, but this one looks like a real balance issue.

 

[Commander Biscuit]

The amount of merits/profit for trading rare goods is the same, correct?

It's exactly the same for me, 35k profit 34 merits. Stock is down to 16.

What's confusing is, Eden apples are stocked in quantities of 15 even prior to PP 2.0, but they're poor profit so their stock quantity doesn't seem related to player activity.

 

[kofeyh]

Not arguing it isn't a grind. But this is Frontier, and Elite. This is who they are, this is what they do.

It may see changes over time (exploration may be back on the table, though a random update on a social media site doesn't really cut it for me) but it's who they are.

Engineering spent years just being awful, then it had some of the RNG removed, then some more, and finally, years and years later, some of the sources were cranked up.

Make no mistake, this is who Frontier are and what they do and it may take years for the merit grind to be addressed.

 

[kofeyh]

It's exactly the same for me, 35k profit 34 merits. Stock is down to 16.

What's confusing is, Eden apples are stocked in quantities of 15 even prior to PP 2.0, but they're poor profit so their stock quantity doesn't seem related to player activity.

Check the system state. Hunt for systems in boom that have rares.

 

[Fixitman]

But rares? I don't recall anyone seeing rares do this in the past. Rares CGs have never reported a problem with the allocation reducing during the week (except on BGS state changes, of course [1]) and the reported symptom - the fixed allocation was always X, and it is now always Y - doesn't match at all what you'd see with over-traded conventional goods either, where you'd get a range of values between X and Y through luck of the draw. The traffic levels I was seeing in systems like Orrere last week were high but not way above what you'd expect for a busy CG system, say.

Several years ago, I got a late start on a CG that involved delivering any rares. I did one run on the first evening, just to work out the best possible route. I then got back into it several days later. Availability of most of those rares had reduced 20-50% by then.

Rares aren't immune to massive buyouts.

 

[Ozric]

Rares CGs have never reported a problem with the allocation reducing during the week (except on BGS state changes, of course [1])

No that's true, but the allocation didn't drop until after the weekly maintenance tick. I could well be wrong, and the timing of the weekly tick could have been purely coincidental. But it would make sense to me.

That is actually what this thread was about, per the title OP chose - NOT the Rare Goods issue.

The title literally says "instead of nerf rares".

It's exactly the same for me, 35k profit 34 merits. Stock is down to 16.

What's confusing is, Eden apples are stocked in quantities of 15 even prior to PP 2.0, but they're poor profit so their stock quantity doesn't seem related to player activity.

The max stock quantity isn't related to player activity no. Leathery Eggs have been 3t allocation for as long as I can remember.

 

[Markov Chaney - Dormant]

The title literally says "instead of nerf rares".

What are your thoughts on the question literally in the title: "why not buff other activities for merits" then?

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

No that's true, but the allocation didn't drop until after the weekly maintenance tick. I could well be wrong, and the timing of the weekly tick could have been purely coincidental. But it would make sense to me.

I am not exactly a BGS expert; but faction state changes can occur mid-week, right? The supply for Orrere dropped before the weekly tick, I don't remember exactly when I read the first "nerf" complaints. I do know that last night, Ngurii or Ngurii's dominant faction? (I don't remember exactly) was in boom, and today after the game game back two factions are in civil war. Concidentally, the supply dropped from 80 to 16. I don't know what the "normal" supply for Soontil Relics is.

I'll quote it again, although I know the wiki isn't the most reliable source, but anyway:

The state of the factions in a system can now affect the allocation total of rare goods. Conflict states (War, Civil War, Election) will reduce production. Other states may also lower production: Bust, Civil Unrest, Lockdown, Outbreak, Expansion, and Retreat. Boom temporarily increases production.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Several years ago, I got a late start on a CG that involved delivering any rares. I did one run on the first evening, just to work out the best possible route. I then got back into it several days later. Availability of most of those rares had reduced 20-50% by then.

Several days later could very easily have been BGS state changes ("several years" sounds like it'll be too long ago to check archive records, though). Those are well known to affect allocations (and the analogous "cap" property of conventional goods) - though don't appear to explain all of the ones reported this time.

That happens, sure - but that's nothing to do with supply-and-demand in that sense: rare allocations have also increased mid-CG as a result of those changes.

For an example of the difference between supply/demand and state change effects with conventional goods

History of Progenitor Cells at Whirling Station

- the two big step changes on the 5th and 11th of October are state changes - in this case, Civil Liberty starting and ending
- the smaller sawtooth patterns are people buying commodities and the supply gradually regenerating
(Not shown here, but you can sometimes see slightly fuzzy sawtooths at really busy markets as different people connect to different market servers which get slightly out of sync)

What's happened with rare allocation recently looks like a BGS state change - it's a sudden step change, everyone has exactly the same experience of it before and after - with the slight catch that in some (but not all!) cases there wasn't an observed state change...

No that's true, but the allocation didn't drop until after the weekly maintenance tick. I could well be wrong, and the timing of the weekly tick could have been purely coincidental. But it would make sense to me.

The weekly tick doesn't affect BGS states, though - the timing of that has always been separate.

And "just after the weekly maintenance" - especially given how long today's ran! - is a really implausible time for market saturation to take effect: it's one of the quietest times for reported activity on both a daily and weekly schedule, and there's just been several hours with guaranteed no purchases for the market to recover at least a little.

(If Frontier want to justify reduced allocations narratively by saying in Galnet "after heavy demand, the supply of Lavian Brandy is at an all-time low" - then absolutely, sure. But an automated mechanism to do so seems very unlikely.)

and today after the game game back two factions are in civil war

State changes on factions other than the station owner shouldn't be relevant - at least, they've never been reported as being so before.
(EDIT: the wiki is utterly terrible for accuracy on BGS-related matters, and in this case is very subtly but very dangerously wrong)

Ngurii did end Boom on the controlling faction at about 0230 today, which with the relatively quiet servers overnight might not have really been noticed until this morning, and would certainly explain the 80-16 drop there.

On the other hand Orrere the controlling faction was in state None all throughout the week - it just entered Boom at 0230 today. So the drop from 128 to 32 occurred without an apparent state change ... and the state change to the normally-favourable [1] Boom today doesn't seem to have helped the allocation.

So based on that the evidence suggests:
- Ngurii today: the drop in allocation was absolutely normal BGS state changes, it just took a little while for people to notice and complain because they were asleep when it happened
- Orrere earlier: this looks like a state change drop but there wasn't a corresponding state change. Could be an unstudied and previously unknown BGS mechanism but I'd say Frontier deciding that the earlier allocation was just too high and suddenly that matters in a way that it didn't two weeks ago is by far the most likely.

That there's a probable mix of causes is certainly going to confuse matters further!

[1] As you can see for conventional goods at https://cdb.sotl.org.uk/effects/s/2 while Boom normally increases supply amounts, the amount is variable and for a few commodities it doesn't. I can't remember if Orrere's good would normally be expected to be boosted by a Boom or not.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

That happens, sure - but that's nothing to do with supply-and-demand in that sense: rare allocations have also increased mid-CG as a result of those changes.

Just to say, my stance was never it was a supply and demand effect - I've been arguing it's a BGS effect for days now .

State changes on factions other than the station owner shouldn't be relevant - at least, they've never been reported as being so before.
(EDIT: the wiki is utterly terrible for accuracy on BGS-related matters, and in this case is very subtly but very dangerously wrong)

Ngurii did end Boom on the controlling faction at about 0230 today, which with the relatively quiet servers overnight might not have really been noticed until this morning, and would certainly explain the 80-16 drop there.

That's what I was trying to say: It was in boom yesterday when I left the game, and not in boom anymore when I checked after the game came back today after the unusual long maintenance.

So based on that the evidence suggests:
- Ngurii today: the drop in allocation was absolutely normal BGS state changes, it just took a little while for people to notice and complain because they were asleep when it happened
- Orrere earlier: this looks like a state change drop but there wasn't a corresponding state change. Could be an unstudied and previously unknown BGS mechanism but I'd say Frontier deciding that the earlier allocation was just too high and suddenly that matters in a way that it didn't two weeks ago is by far the most likely.

That's an argument I can get behind. As I might have said earlier, I didn't follow Orrere closely because it's too close for my power to matter. I take issue mostly with people blaring "nerf" and repeating it in their echo chambers without looking at the details.

Maybe then the question remains why the Orrere supply was so comically high? 120 units seems outlandish for rare goods. Some kind of BGS blip? Do the rare supplies do strange things sometimes that nobody notices because rare goods trading didn't really matter in the big picture?

 

[Ozric]

What are your thoughts on the question literally in the title: "why not buff other activities for merits" then?

Well I think that they will monitor and balance the activities as they said they would.

The weekly tick doesn't affect BGS states, though - the timing of that has always been separate.

And "just after the weekly maintenance" - especially given how long today's ran! - is a really implausible time for market saturation to take effect: it's one of the quietest times for reported activity on both a daily and weekly schedule, and there's just been several hours with guaranteed no purchases for the market to recover at least a little.

(If Frontier want to justify reduced allocations narratively by saying in Galnet "after heavy demand, the supply of Lavian Brandy is at an all-time low" - then absolutely, sure. But an automated mechanism to do so seems very unlikely.)

I wasn't thinking it was state changes. More that it feels as though it's natural market changes.

I don't study the markets enough to be able to say with confidence how they've all fluctuated, but I do know that when we were doing the last Buckyball race which started the week before the update and finished last weekend the allocation was 24t for Lavian Brandy. That has now doubled to 48. There are others that are sitting at that level or higher. They could have standardised the allocation numbers across the board, but then I would have assumed the lower ones would all be brought up to balance out the drops of a few of the higher ones.

That doesn't seem to add up to me. I think as you've intimated there are a number factors at play.