Making Money and Exploits

[ajburr]

I'll be honest, I've gotten rich on one of the exploits in this game, though at the time I truly did not realize it WAS an exploit. I just thought I found a great way to make money (scan missions on Quince). I don't regret doing it, because if I hadn't, I probably would have quit. Making enough money to have fun in this game is WAY too hard. You can argue that point if you want, but I didn't start having fun until I had enough money to buy a decent ship and A-rate the crap out of it.

So I ask, why do the devs hate us making decent money? I mean, we bought the game, we pay for all the stupid little extra customizations (bobble heads? Seriously?). They've GOT to be filthy rich by now. It's not a huge mystery to me. They're stringing us along. But it would be nice if one of them would explain what's so damn bad about being rich? Even with that former exploit, it still leaves me with little to play with. If I were to buy an Anaconda and A-rate it, I wouldn't have any money left to pay for insurance if I got destroyed (I know, because I tried it). Right now I'm just flying an AspX.

So lets up the pay a bit, eh? It isn't as if having a lot of money has made me bored with the game. Far from it! It has allowed me to explore parts of the game that I otherwise never would have even attempted. Furthermore, there is economy is this game, unlike most other MMOs. So it isn't like we're going to ruin the markets and create inflation.

The skimmer missions, for those that don't know, have been nerfed, so there goes our fun once again. Please... devs... let us make some money!

 

[jimmychoosshoes]

FDev do not care. You are not in their demographic for spending microtransaction money so why should they help you out? The purists who want a long grind for a ship as a sense of achievement and a righteous path to upgrading via material grinding are the people who will buy paint, bobbleheads and decals etc. They should be listened to and helped, not the casual player who stays in solo. You are merely a drain on server resources.

 

[Darth Nerferous]

So TRUE! Give us more Money Rewards! I‘ll quit PLAYING if you don’t stop to ruin our Profit in a GAME! A Game is supposed to entertain me and make me having a good time. Reallife is boring, and so is playing a Game which wants you to spend 24/7 grinding for Money, Materials, Data, Engineers and Standings in repetitive Missions just to get your Butt whooped by overpowered Aliens. What in the Universe do you expect from an average Gamer? To have no Reallife and to work harder for my money and game progress than I do in Reallife?

 

[JohnRoberts]

If I were to buy an Anaconda and A-rate it, I wouldn't have any money left to pay for insurance if I got destroyed (I know, because I tried it). Right now I'm just flying an AspX.

A maxed out AspX is maybe 30MCr, a maxed out Anaconda is maybe 600MCr. Just to let you know, there are some other ships in-between.

 

[Bomba Luigi]

Today is one of those "People are weird, I don't understand them" days for me. Like seriously, 300 mil per hour is decent money and everything else not? I mean... what? "Devs hate us!!" ehm... what? Never heard of balance? even bloody single player games often patch out exploits, they don't effect anybody but it ruins the intedend balance, so it gets fixed. Balance - look it up, its a good thing for a game.

No really, its okay for a game to have balance, it doesn't mean the devs hate you or that they try to murder you, thats just how many games are made.


And seriously, for a long time and still today we have missions that take about 5 minutes with zero risk and pay you enough money to buy and equip a cobra among other ships. There is plenty decent payment out there.

 

[signal11th]

FDev do not care. You are not in their demographic for spending microtransaction money so why should they help you out? The purists who want a long grind for a ship as a sense of achievement and a righteous path to upgrading via material grinding are the people who will buy paint, bobbleheads and decals etc. They should be listened to and helped, not the casual player who stays in solo. You are merely a drain on server resources.

Probably you need to reread his post...

 

[Verdigris]

I got a piece of the skimmer cheese. I'll admit it. But I stopped after about 250mil and went back to playing other things.

So, that out there....

I looked at the traffic report in 31 Beta Leonis. There were over 5 THOUSAND Viper 3s. Multiple thousands of other hulls. And a little of everything else. Traffic for these missions was insane! It is clear that a high percentage of the player base was all out here getting the credits while there were credits to be got.

My belief is that these people wanted to money now, abandoning all other content for the time being, because they were worried (rightfully) that this gold mine would soon play out, and it would be back to the normal missions for credits at a much slower pace. In other words, they were making hay while the sun shined.

Sadly, I think that the community, and FDev, took the wrong message from this. With the disabling of the skimmer mission type, FDev has put the brakes onto the ATM just spitting out money (And I will agree that 2-350mil/hour is over the top, but who does it hurt? Not me. Not you. Just...spreadsheets). The response was an emotional one made out of some primal instinct to quash what was different. This one area was different, so it must be bad. Let us fix it.

The message that I feel should have been taken from this is that a very large part of the active community feels normal financial rewards are insufficient, and so taking advantage of a windfall location became a top priority while it was available. The proper counter to this isn't to close this loophole in the system so much as it is to improve the rest of the system.

Wing missions under-pay. The payout in relation to risk and effort is not really an improvement over individual missions. 4000 tons of biowaste a system away for 8mil doesn't compete for my time the way that 180 tons for 3 mil will. Price per unit is skewed.

Normal missions underpay. A full board of data delivery missions (Assume a 100k average each) will yield 2mil. And in many instances will involve multiple jumps and a variety of supercruise. Let's assume an hour.

Bounty hunting can be lucrative at 10mil/hour with a decent ship (Meaning you already had money) and a wing, but one bad shot and the new C&P system makes your day unpleasant.

Mining, exploration, piracy, all of it is underwhelming (Road to Riches excepted. But that's not -really- exploring is it.) Making the rebuy on a good ship in a single hour of time is a challenge.

Most lucrative method I've found, playing completely as designed, is running rich NPCs around the galaxy to scan POI beacons. I could pull in 15-30mil/hour fairly consistently with luxury cabins.

My suggested "fix" to these financial printing presses (Quince, Rhea, Smeaton, 31 Beta, others...) is not to knee-jerk close the loophole and ignore the rest. That is like treating the flu by making better kleenex. I would start with a 50% boost to mission payouts. See how things progress, and then make further adjustments. The answer isn't to crack down on people making credits, but to make the playerbase feel more secure that they can always make credits at an acceptable rate. This will likely make the grind of exploit systems far less attractive ("Yeah, it's a LOT of money, but I can always make money. So I'll keep doing XYZ for now.") and allow the players to continue enjoying all aspects of the game.

TL;DR: Up mission payouts so that 'sploits aren't as attractive.

 

[Vorxian]

I looked at the traffic report in 31 Beta Leonis. There were over 5 THOUSAND Viper 3s. Multiple thousands of other hulls. And a little of everything else. Traffic for these missions was insane! It is clear that a high percentage of the player base was all out here getting the credits while there were credits to be got.

NAIL on THE head.

So why did all these players feel that 31BL was better than the rest of the game?

THAT is the question AND answer.

FDEV took to the skies and killed 31BL.

What the should have done was made the rest of the game equally as good as 31BL, then people wouldn't need to flock there in droves to compensate for everything else being managed by Mc Scrooge.

Just observing.

 

[Entilzar]

I personally feel that the game lack a balanced way to get credits, It all started with trade runs, remember back to rare goods, People that wanted to spend the time grinding out rare goods run back and forth 300 ly jumps, before we had 1000 ly plot route ability. it was time consuming, tedious but paid well and people did it, the trouble was that the people that didn't want to do trading (pew pew croud anyone?) whined about traders getting rich while they were killing stuff and making no money, Rare goods got nerfed, then the traders were making much credits doing proper trading, but making 4-5k a tonne profit was still too much so people whined and it got nerfed, then came the t9 goods drop 3 million credits for dropping off a full hold of crap commodities again, wow too much credits being given out to people that were prepared to make the mind numbing repetitive and tedious tasks so people whined and surprise it got nerfed, the list goes on.

I have read many posts since the original beta, there seem to be 3 camps,
those that wanna make as much credits as possible in the fastest amount of time,
those that call every money making task in game an exploit,
those that claim not to care either way.

in a game where one persons actions have no effect on anyone elses , there are far to many people that whine about things and it creates a never ending circle of people trying to find the next cash cow and people screaming for it to be fixed asap.

rather then making skimmer mission pay out 3-8 million credits make then pay out 2 million max, but make it possible for traders to make 4k a tone profit, the pew pew brigade can get bonds that pay out 2-3 milling in 15 minutes, explorers get better payout for scanning,, etc

that way every one can do the thing they enjoy and the pay out should be relatively similar,

FD must have an amount that one person can make an hour from doing an activity that they feel is acceptable
be it 10mil or 50 mil,. then just let the community know what that is and make it possible for each aspect to achieve it, then its down to the players to play the game the way they want and figure out how to achieve it.,

 

[Hellakitty]

I went to Volyboom on my main account, just to top off my bank account so I can buy and store some more 8A fuel scoops as liquid assets.

I knew it wasn't going to last, as do all of the other goldrushes. I'm also aware that if fdev decide to relieve people of the funds they make from these things, I could see my credit balance/8A fuel scoop numbers decline quite rapidly.

I'm OK with this risk, as I have been with the risk of possibly losing the stuff I've gained from other goldrushes.

 

[Avetorian]

@OP if you think making money in this game is way too hard you should have been here in the dark ages aka Gamma. People thought rare trades was bad lawl thats nothing compared to sothis/quince and now skimmer missions. We were lucky to find anything making us 5 mill an hour, never mind 50-100.

 

[Pyrotiger]

@OP if you think making money in this game is way too hard you should have been here in the dark ages aka Gamma. People thought rare trades was bad lawl thats nothing compared to sothis/quince and now skimmer missions. We were lucky to find anything making us 5 mill an hour, never mind 50-100.

Has to be done.

[video=youtube;1by0-nkKOTs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=1by0-nkKOTs[/video]