It's great to be back but I have a big concern

[Refreshing Truth]

I was one of the many players who got into the game at launch but eventually left because I lost faith in the development direction, or more specifically the lack of development altogether.

Experiencing the new sandbox pvx direction has been awesome and colonisation feels like the missing piece of the puzzle for Elite, to support the developers I've been spending real money on cosmetics and renaming stations. Working on something like this is extremely expensive and I want the devs to make as much money as possible.

However the paid ships store is very concerning to me, Elite has many gameplay loops and some of them are pvp and competitive in nature, for example PowerPlay where you battle other players for territory control via various activities, right now in the store you can buy a A class T9 with engineered parts, you can then use this ship to do massive hauling runs in competitive activities and have far more impact than a player who didn't buy it, earning a similar spec ship in game actually takes hundreds of hours of play and specifically taking high pay activities (rather than doing what you find fun) it's a lot of work.

The solution is difficult, but the alternative of baking pay to win into the ship store will eventually destroy the game, it's not going to stop at A grade engineered T9's, the pressure from the monetisation team will be to offer the absolute best of everything in that store and once that has been done then it will creep into other areas of the game just like it does in every game, if players dismiss it now it'll get worse, next will be a WoW token equivalent that essentially lets you buy in game credits with real money.

The monetisation for colonisation is great, paid ships for solo players who don't want to contribute to a pvx galaxy is fine too, but you can't have paid ship commanders in open play influencing pvx stuff, the designers need to separate it off, I think when you play elite, if you want to buy in game progress you should permanently convert your commander to a status that can't influence the pvp, PowerPlay content in the game. We don't tolerate cheaters in online game's because we all value fairness, so why do we tolerate developer sanctioned cheating with money?

 

[Astrofizzix]

Not counting the engineering, you can get a T9 with all A-rated modules with just a few hours of exobiology. But even counting the engineering, I find it difficult the think it would take hundreds of hours.

 

[Kestrel1]

However the paid ships store is very concerning to me, Elite has many gameplay loops and some of them are pvp and competitive in nature, for example PowerPlay where you battle other players for territory control via various activities, right now in the store you can buy a A class T9 with engineered parts, you can then use this ship to do massive hauling runs in competitive activities and have far more impact than a player who didn't buy it, earning a similar spec ship in game actually takes hundreds of hours of play and specifically taking high pay activities (rather than doing what you find fun) it's a lot of work.

You're overcomplicating it.

If you try to haul in a system with PvPers (who come after you) then you will either be looking at a rebuy screen or you'll high-wake out. No amount of engineering is going to help. After that you'll probably just switch to Solo mode and go about your business.

If you want to PvP then you need to engineer your ship to the gills. And run meta loadouts which pre-engineered ships do not have. There's no world where you buy an off-the-shelf pre-engineered ship with ARX and get any advantage whatsoever in PvP. You're either going to gank a defenseless ship (for which you don't need engineering) or you're going to get smoked by someone in a well fitted PvP ship.

Engineering these days is really easy. It certainly doesn't take hundreds of hours. Well, it would for a new player but most of those hours would just be learning the game systems.

Solo mode eliminates any competitive aspects to the game anyway. There's quite literally no reality where buying a pre-engineered ship gives you any advantage whatsoever.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

If you try to haul in a system with PvPers (who come after you) then you will either be looking at a rebuy screen or you'll high-wake out. No amount of engineering is going to help.

I beg to differ.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

And it could still be engineered a bit more for more defence.

However, the best way to get a clear run in open is to kit a sidewinder with an interdictor and interdict them over and over until they get annoyed and leave

 

[Kestrel1]

I beg to differ.

Yea but you're a dinosaur <3

Anyone who's buying ships with ARX to gain a competitive advantage isn't going to run that build much less use that build correctly.

EDIT: To be clear what I'm saying is that it takes far more hours to learn the game enough to deal with a gank than it takes to engineer a ship that can deal with a gank. So pre-engineered ships being sold don't upset any competitive balance (using the term "competitive" loosely, as we have Solo mode).

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Yea but you're a dinosaur <3

 

[Refreshing Truth]

You're overcomplicating it.

If you try to haul in a system with PvPers (who come after you) then you will either be looking at a rebuy screen or you'll high-wake out. No amount of engineering is going to help. After that you'll probably just switch to Solo mode and go about your business.

If you want to PvP then you need to engineer your ship to the gills. And run meta loadouts which pre-engineered ships do not have. There's no world where you buy an off-the-shelf pre-engineered ship with ARX and get any advantage whatsoever in PvP. You're either going to gank a defenseless ship (for which you don't need engineering) or you're going to get smoked by someone in a well fitted PvP ship.

Engineering these days is really easy. It certainly doesn't take hundreds of hours. Well, it would for a new player but most of those hours would just be learning the game systems.

Solo mode eliminates any competitive aspects to the game anyway. There's quite literally no reality where buying a pre-engineered ship gives you any advantage whatsoever.

Thanks for the reply,

"There's no reality in which buying a pre-engineered gives you any advantage whatsoever"
I think it does, you'll make a much bigger impact than a player who puts in the same hours but doesn't skip straight to the endgame in a A class T9. You'll get more done quicker even though a non ship buying player will eventually get to an A class T9.

"solo mode eliminates any competitive aspects to the game anyway" I still see the PowerPlay territory control as competitive, also BGS manipulation for systems too, especially our own systems.

I understand that 'it's not that bad right now', my concern is pay to win rarely gets better in games by virtue of it needing to constantly expand in scope to continue to make revenue, I'm concerned where we'll be in 5 years time. It would be great if there was a way to totally isolate it from the competitive elements of the game.

 

[Jinx Chrome]

However, the best way to get a clear run in open is to kit a sidewinder with an interdictor and interdict them over and over until they get annoyed and leave

One way to do it However, this approach is somewhat not worth my time and they may just block you to get to the next victim.

 

[Refreshing Truth]

Not counting the engineering, you can get a T9 with all A-rated modules with just a few hours of exobiology. But even counting the engineering, I find it difficult the think it would take hundreds of hours.

I introduced a friend to the game a couple of weeks ago, he's about 30 hours in and just bought a e class Dolphin and he has 1 mil in the bank, he owns no other ships, I think an A class T9 is pretty likely not gonna be in his reach by hour 100 unless he meta games and grinds.

I agree someone could make it to a T9 with A class modules in under 100 hours if they follow online guides and meta game but if people play the way they should and just enjoy the experience and do things and missions that interest them then it's not normal to get anywhere near that.

 

[Jinx Chrome]

Thanks for the reply,

"There's no reality in which buying a pre-engineered gives you any advantage whatsoever"
I think it does, you'll make a much bigger impact than a player who puts in the same hours but doesn't skip straight to the endgame in a A class T9. You'll get more done quicker even though a non ship buying player will eventually get to an A class T9.

"solo mode eliminates any competitive aspects to the game anyway" I still see the PowerPlay territory control as competitive, also BGS manipulation for systems too, especially our own systems.

I understand that 'it's not that bad right now', my concern is pay to win rarely gets better in games by virtue of it needing to constantly expand in scope to continue to make revenue, I'm concerned where we'll be in 5 years time. It would be great if there was a way to totally isolate it from the competitive elements of the game.

What is 'endgame' in a game which is an open world sandbox? And why is it a bad thing when a beginner buys an engineered ship? They still have to learn the ropes of flying, trading, combat and many more things. Also, the pre-engineered modules cannot be developed further or moved to another ship.

Pre-built ships are nice if you want to try out another career, when you are a beginner and want to orient yourself or when there's a CG and you don't have a ship which fills in that class.
To ask again and again (because no one could give a halfway solid answer to that question): How on earth (or rather the Milky Way) do you define 'win Elite Dangerous'? Everyone of us is a tiny cogwheel in a huge galaxy and neither Commander Shepard nor Luke Skywalker or anyone else of importance. You blaze your own trail. For yourself, for your squadron. But that's all about it. Deal with it.
To become famous in ED, you need to achieve completely different things and no engineering will help you. What are those things? Achievements in the likes of commanders like Alec Turner, CMDR Buur or Erimus Kamzel and many more. They all didn't need pre-built ships for their fame.

 

[Kestrel1]

I think it does, you'll make a much bigger impact than a player who puts in the same hours but doesn't skip straight to the endgame in a A class T9. You'll get more done quicker even though a non ship buying player will eventually get to an A class T9.

No disrespect but it sounds like you just don't know how the game works.

There's virtually no measurable difference between a stock T9, A-rated T9, and fully engineered T9. The game just doesn't work that way. All 3 can survive NPC encounters without issue. All 3 cannot survive a PvP encounter. The differences that do exist (boost speed, jump range) don't and never will provide a measurable impact on the game economy.

I still see the PowerPlay territory control as competitive, also BGS manipulation for systems too, especially our own systems.

None of these things are competitive because all of them can be done in Solo mode. And even stock ships are more than capable of surviving NPC encounters.

Elite is just not that kind of game.

I understand that 'it's not that bad right now', my concern is pay to win rarely gets better in games by virtue of it needing to constantly expand in scope to continue to make revenue, I'm concerned where we'll be in 5 years time. It would be great if there was a way to totally isolate it from the competitive elements of the game.

There are no competitive elements and there never will be. So it's a moot point.

 

[Kestrel1]

I introduced a friend to the game a couple of weeks ago, he's about 30 hours in and just bought a e class Dolphin and he has 1 mil in the bank, he owns no other ships, I think an A class T9 is pretty likely not gonna be in his reach by hour 100 unless he meta games and grinds.

I agree someone could make it to a T9 with A class modules in under 100 hours if they follow online guides and meta game but if people play the way they should and just enjoy the experience and do things and missions that interest them then it's not normal to get anywhere near that.

Your friend is doing it right. Just play the game and have fun. Grinding in Elite is a fast track to burnout.

Think of Elite as a single player game with some online social elements.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I still see the PowerPlay territory control as competitive, also BGS manipulation for systems too, especially our own systems.

Powerplay wants so much to be competitive, but since it was designed by Frontier Developments and implemented as a subsystem of Elite Dangerous, it's really a peaceful "build up your own systems" game with 12 different choices of colour. Essentially no-one attacks anyone else with any particular force (a few systems out of ten thousand are not a meaningful exception), so the competition is just "who can reinforce all their own systems first".

BGS manipulation is balanced to be fairly ship-independent in a lot of respects (the diminishing returns curve makes a 700t ship a lot less than 7x as effective as a 100t ship) and besides is sufficiently obscure that anyone deliberately taking part in it is going to be beyond the point where some quickstart ships are going to make any difference to their capabilities. The introduction of colonisation has meant that any group can expand a faction to 100 systems in a fraction of the time - and without the need to compete at all for territory - of the four years minimum it would previously have taken to get that big ... which again, rather takes away the competitive aspect of it.

 

[Refreshing Truth]

What is 'endgame' in a game which is an open world sandbox? And why is it a bad thing when a beginner buys an engineered ship? They still have to learn the ropes of flying, trading, combat and many more things. Also, the pre-engineered modules cannot be developed further or moved to another ship.

Pre-built ships are nice if you want to try out another career, when you are a beginner and want to orient yourself or when there's a CG and you don't have a ship which fills in that class.
To ask again and again (because no one could give a halfway solid answer to that question): How on earth (or rather the Milky Way) do you define 'win Elite Dangerous'? Everyone of us is a tiny cogwheel in a huge galaxy and neither Commander Shepard nor Luke Skywalker or anyone else of importance. You blaze your own trail. For yourself, for your squadron. But that's all about it. Deal with it.
To become famous in ED, you need to achieve completely different things and no engineering will help you. What are those things? Achievements in the likes of commanders like Alec Turner, CMDR Buur or Erimus Kamzel and many more. They all didn't need pre-built ships for their fame.

In Elite Dangerous you 'win' by getting victory conditions in the competitive gameplay systems the developers have added to the game, some common examples would be you defeat a rival Power in PowerPlay by undermining their system and gaining it as your own, this would be a 'win'.

Another example would be in a pvp fight against a new player of the same skill and hours played, you win because you're flying a combat ship bought from the store and the other player is in a sidewinder.

Another example would be in a faction conflict where your faction achieves a victory over the faction of a rival player group because you are able to destabilise the rival faction faster using better ships.

These are 3 examples of wins in Elite Dangerous

 

[LightningEffect]

I had to make an account to talk about this
I started playing at the beginning of march, so basically a little over 20 days ago and 3 days after having started playing i bought the t9 jumpstarter, and it has already brought me in over 10b credits, i now own a fleet carrier and an A rated mining Anaconda pre engineered (because i don't even have any engineers unlocked)
But what i have done is supply FC carriers with materials, aka basically helping other players. Since i began playing i've hauled close to 150k commodities to carriers and put in over 60 hours out of my nearly 85 hours in game.

So to an extend it's true that you can skip a large portion of the "progression" if you see progression as ships. But the real progression still require time and reputation to unlock the best modules and weapons. The ship selling model is still far more benign compared to Star Citizen, which i have thrown over 3k$ into...
And when it comes to PvP the more experienced player will always out do a new player, even if he got a large type 9. Which just makes them more of an easy target to clap for a pirate.
I did however have my first two player interceptions today in Minerva, and i was in a stock Mandalay, still managed to win the interception game twice, which was a great feeling, no p2w there for me.

I've also thrown quite a bit of money towards the store already for cosmetics, if i didn't get the type 9, i would probably have given up already, now i'm completely hooked on the game, it hasn't really allowed me to win anything significant though, i'm now in a comfortable place where i'm beginning to build out actual ships for what i want to do, and as well starting to farm rep and gather materials for the Guardian FSB and the engineering grind.

 

[Coolgroove]

"There's no reality in which buying a pre-engineered gives you any advantage whatsoever"
I think it does, you'll make a much bigger impact than a player who puts in the same hours but doesn't skip straight to the endgame in a A class T9. You'll get more done quicker even though a non ship buying player will eventually get to an A class T9.

Elite is a very very very long game. It doesn't have much in terms of 'quick fix'. Something that may look like a huge advantage (with a pre-build ship) for a new player is actually quite meaningless and saves not that much time in the long run.

To have any advantage in anything in Elite - knowledge and skill is much more important, and those you can get only with time/effort and practice.

Pre-build ships can give excitement and extra joy when someone is starting out, they'll save maybe a couple of evenings to get it earlier. But unless your are an old and established player - to get something big done, especially in any competitive way - it's going to take so many evenings that in comparison - no advantage can be bought.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

The only interesting or noteworthy things I've heard anyone use a T-9 for is racing and fighting in CZs.

 

[Reggit]

...the real progression still require time and reputation to unlock the best modules and weapons.
...And when it comes to PvP the more experienced player will always out do a new player, even if he got a large type 9. Which just makes them more of an easy target to clap for a pirate.

This
(Welcome to the forums btw!) o7

I could go from Sidewinder to T9 in a few hours...and I could go from T9 to PvP in a few days...but that is only because I know what I'm doing...
If I had never played Elite before, it would take me alot longer.

IMHO ships for ARX (as they stand now) aren't so bad. What you can build in-game is much much better, and it would still take a while for a new Cmdr to figure out how to use them most effectively.

...the pressure from the monetisation team will be to offer the absolute best of everything in that store and once that has been done then it will creep into other areas of the game just like it does in every game, if players dismiss it now it'll get worse, next will be a WoW token equivalent that essentially lets you buy in game credits with real money.

I understand your point - and suffice to say I'm keeping an eye on that slippery slope...I'll be the first to complain if it gets bad, but we're not there yet.
Extra money for FDev hopefully means more development time spent on Elite.
(Also, welcome to the forums to you too!) o7

 

[Refreshing Truth]

No disrespect but it sounds like you just don't know how the game works.

There's virtually no measurable difference between a stock T9, A-rated T9, and fully engineered T9. The game just doesn't work that way. All 3 can survive NPC encounters without issue. All 3 cannot survive a PvP encounter. The differences that do exist (boost speed, jump range) don't and never will provide a measurable impact on the game economy.


None of these things are competitive because all of them can be done in Solo mode. And even stock ships are more than capable of surviving NPC encounters.

Elite is just not that kind of game.


There are no competitive elements and there never will be. So it's a moot point.

So my argument was a player with a sidewinder (or another early mid game ship) will make a less of a impact on a PowerPlay territory war than a player in a A class T9 from the store and you replied that different tiers of T9 don't make much difference... sorry if there's been some confusion but I never claimed tier differences in T9 were big or small, if possible can you explain to me why two players of equal skill and time input don't see different competitive outcomes on PowerPlay if one of them buys the A class T9 from the store?
I think it's definitely pay to win.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I think it's definitely pay to win.

Oh, it absolutely is.

But then, so was the rebuy discount that original alpha/beta backers got, and so was the access to Engineering at all that buyers of Horizons got, and so is the access to additional markets, mission types, Powerplay activities, ships, etc. that Odyssey buyers get. And those you can't/couldn't even get something equivalent just by playing the base game a bit longer.

What they're doing right now is incredibly mild in comparison to the potential competitive advantage "having access to engineers" provided, so there's not necessarily a slippery slope to worry about.


(Now, some people's personal definition of "pay 2 win" means that "things sold as microtransactions" can be and "things sold as DLC" can't be. And other people's personal definition is that "pay 2 win is never right, but I'm okay with this so it isn't pay 2 win". And other people say that as only losers play Elite Dangerous nothing in it can possibly be pay 2 win. It's not really worth getting into whether it's P2W or not - either you can put up with it / actively like it and keep playing, or it's not something you want to deal with and you find something else to do with your time, and what it's called doesn't matter for that)