making money is too easy?

[Zosa]

I started playing last week in the Beta phase, overall impression is this game is brilliant in so many ways... but I don't want to get into that... stay on topic

Just my 2 cents worth but I believe this is far to easy to make money, if within a week you can afford the best ship and fully equip it there is no sense of achievement. I understand that this may change in Gamma or Final release which is what I'm hoping for.

I used to play World of Warcraft until they changed the game to suit "Causal" players making it far to easy for the experienced players, say it used to take 3 months to get to level 80 you could do it in a week or 2. Then another 6 months to get the best equipment changed to a few weeks...

I know it's a complete different game but I hope you get the idea... it's a fine balance between the 2 and to keep both sides happy :S

 

[Toscaner]

It is not repetitive mundane difficulty you need, but interesting always different difficulty which can only come from human players, adversaries. As things go now this game will be DOA since they want to remove any meaningful human interactions from the game to deliver a poor scripted experience. To make to game look like it offers more playing time than it is worth they have to increase interdictions, increase AI difficulty like they shoot out your power generator from 2 km in one shot and so on. Fun on the cube.

if i'm 1000 star systems away from you, you will not be able to make the game more interesting for me, by interdicting me, sorry
we need NPCs for that..

but at least you can predict the success of this game already..thx

 

[Pit Berensky]

if i'm 1000 star systems away from you, you will not be able to make the game more interesting for me, by interdicting me, sorry
we need NPCs for that..

but at least you can predict the success of this game already..thx

agree, with 200 milon star systems (and virtually infinte ones with procedural generation) you will never see a human player other than in arenas or some PvP dedicated areas...
NPCs are going to be fundamental

 

[Special_Circumstances]

This assumes the T9 will get interdicted by a lone Sidewinder. I am thinking more of those fearsome packs of Cobras one of which I have recently run from...

If you do get interdicted by a pack of player Cobras you might as well just jettison. As it should be.


If a noob in his Sidewinder can have any effect on a Type-9 in the actual game then the balance needs addressing. A Type-9 should have auto defence turrets that can kill a sidewinder and possibly a noob in an eagle without any player interaction at all, not even evasive flying.

If a player who just bought the game can log on and within an hour can cause me any kind of pain then the game is all wrong.

 

[CaptainSodom]

I lost 10k (all of my) credits in a highly embarrassing docking bay accident, and got it back in about 3 hours by grinding trade routes. Not enough experience yet to say whether it is easy or not.

Big chunk of that was a 4k shipping contract for one unit of biowaste from one of the harder-to-reach corners of the playable space. Maybe there are more of those?

Interdictions are just a nuisance with a Sidewinder, you don't even get shot if you fly at max speed (all power directed to thrusters) and get back to SC as soon as FSD is back online.

 

[Snuble]

Will depend on what people think is NEEDED to buy. Right now the bar is Anaconda+modules. This will most likely change.

Trading is a know credit income source. Its easy to calculate for Frontier. I think it should be used as a baseline for credit income on "other" activites. And then rebalance what stuff costs based on that baseline. In the end it will come down to hours of gametime needed to achieve whatever itemization.

Also when there is a ranking system to climb / achievements to obtain credits will take second seat. I can see more then a few pilots just getting their range maxed and never visit the same system twice ever. For them the credit income is secondary at best.

 

[Special_Circumstances]

I think the amount you earn and the profit looks like a nice progression when you upgrade your ships (2k a run to 10k a run to 30k a run to 100k a run to 500k a run to millions and millions)

I just think ships should cost more, perhaps?

 

[Kulin]

I think the amount you earn and the profit looks like a nice progression when you upgrade your ships (2k a run to 10k a run to 30k a run to 100k a run to 500k a run to millions and millions)

I just think ships should cost more, perhaps?

This.

But i wouldnt say this is really important at the moment. This should be done in the last days of the beta when you are able to compare all income sources.

More important would be in my eyes to implement other ways to earn money. For example Bounty Hunting, Mining, Exploration and so on. Trading gets really boring after a while.

Then we should balance them.

 

[JonnyC0mbat]

As a new Elite Dangerous player (long time Elite, and Frontier player) I don't think making money is all that easy. Many of you have been playing this game for months so you have got into a good routine for money making.

It takes a lot longer in Dangerous to make money than it does in Frontier. I prefer the pricing and money making now than I did in the previous Beta version, and I find the whole experience a lot less frustrating.

 

[Le Flambeur]

I think it is a bit to easy to make money by farming trade route a the moment but I do not want to see a game were you have to grind 10h in the sidewinder to get a descent ship, at least a ship that would be ok for your choosen play style, be it trader or combat.
I am fine with spending time to better equip my ship or unlock ship by fighting for one side or the other or running dangerous trade route but please no grind of doing the same thing over an over again this is so boring.
I also notice that some of the (planned?) hull upgrade a rather expensive, like 200k for some alloy on a viper? This is the right direction to me, give me a ship and let me pay a lot to get it to what I want to be instead of limiting my ability to move on from the basic ships.

 

[FullMetalBukkit]

Yeah I think the problem is not the profit made trading its the ease in getting from A to B without conflict and with no need for an escort etc.

 

[SlickReed]

This type of message drives me nuts. It's not the game putting you in this position, it's you.

You're obviously not experienced enough at combat to win an interdiction without it costing more than it's worth, so RUN AWAY. There's still nothing in the game that can stop you.

You could reset your save and start with a new sidewinder and 1000 credits, or even just sell any extra equipment and drive it into the wall of a station and get a new one free.

You could take missions to ship free cargo from one place to another for a couple of thousand credits.

You could just run around in Azeban from unidentified signal to unidentified signal until you found one that had cargo and sell it on the black market.

Compared to a couple of iterations ago, the game is practically throwing money at you now.

Agreed. We all had our progress reset with the start of SB.

Move small amounts of cargo to get started making credits.

I started with a sidewinder and 1000 credits. Now I have a cobra and 600k in the bank. And I only have a few hours per night to play.

And for the love of god please never pay to fix a sidewinder. They are free. Just let it die and get another one.

 

[CaptainSodom]

And I only have a few hours per night to play.

Only few hours a night? lol

 

[Ramireza]

Making money is only time consuming, but not hard. After you found a good trading route its just grinding, because noone can realy harm you. Well, maybe the biggest danger is you... attacking the station wall with shipnose.

 

[Memnoch]

Trading can be a thing of terror though. Transporting around 900,000 or so credits worth of of Palladium for instance. That's the most nervous I've been in the game so far, not knowing if I will get interdicted or rammed by someone when I come in to dock.

Yes, making money is easy, but then it was always going to be. Do A, earn B. The amount might be in question though, but then this is offset with repairs, upgrades and the ever increasing price of ships and equipment.

 

[Special_Circumstances]

Also bear in mind that at the moment we're stuck in a 50 star play pen. The ships we've got now might end up just being short range traders that can only hop sub 20Ly on a tank.

when we have the entire 400 billion stars to navigate to, you'd have to think youd need bigger ships.

With all those stars you'd have to think most won't have a station (some in our mere 50 don't) and so players will have to colonise those themselves.

With 400 billlion destinations every single player can leave a legacy in the game with their own station, own empire.

There will be plenty of things to spend money on down the road. Just getting a ship in the first week might seem like the simplest thing ever. You might consider getting an Anaconda as the point at which you're no longer in the Tutorial first week and you can then leave the home systems and go off into the Frontier of the galaxy and explore and make your mark.

 

[jabokai]

I find it really amusing that some people actually think the current rate of progression is actually correct! The game would be on the shelf in a fortnight if it stayed the way it is - progression is ludicrously fast! As others have said the ship and equipment prices must be placeholders specifically to allow us to advance quickly, thus testing more mechanisms within the game.

 

[Andromalius]

Making money via trading is currently a risk free enterprise with missions to help as well. It is far too easy.

Yeah tell that to the drunk NPC who rammed me in Wyrd airlock yesterday, 450K in cargo down the drain. ^^ (I can afford to carry those kind of cargoes, not complaining)

 

[Special_Circumstances]

NPCs are the main hazard to a trader. I can't think how many times I've had the IMPACT warning pop up at the slot because some dumbass NPC changed vector

 

[BennyBoyW]

I agree with those who think it's just about right at the moment.
It's tough to get a start in trading, as it should be.
When you get up to the bigger ships, margins get better - as they should.
The way I think about it is to determine what this game actually is - is trading and money making the be all and end all of your game ? For me, the money is just a means to getting into the ship I want with the loadout that I want and then doing exactly what I want to do whenever I want to do it, in the knowledge that if I run out of money, I begin the whole process again.
If you just want to grind trade then please feel free - I personally want to do a Cobra-load of other stuff