Multi-crew rewards need to be 1:1 with the profits the pilot / ship owner gets.

[Kaocraft]

Dividing rewards only works if the labor time is more than halved, otherwise collaboration is disincentivized. We don't even have equal reward division in multicrew, it is subdivided by grind title (not actual skill or contribution).

So let's explore why collaborating players should not have a credit incentive to multicrew in game.

Is it that you don't want another player with friends having an easier time of credit grinding than you? That guy has friends so his life is easier - that is not fair. There is an obvious solution to that inequity isn't there? It isn't about screwing the other guy out of fun.

Let the players that wish to collaborate have fun, don't worry about their "rate" of progression. (engineering has the actual progression now).

Are you arguing that the completion of missions and mining and bounty hunting has toxic effects to the BGS? Forgive me for saying this, but there are thousands and thousands of players that are not in PMFs and carry on their activities oblivious to its machinations. The missions offered at stations are annoyingly narrow in scope (as a result of the spectacular BGS) and are often only made interesting through multicrew or wing collaboration for many players.

This little niche game needs new blood to stay alive, dropping a few credits on the buggy multicrew is not going to break it.

I'm arguing that Wings and Multicrew should just work for all game activities rather than be their own little walled off play date carnival rides. And if those systems functioned well, and served as versatile tools for players to use however they see fit, that there would be no need for multiplied payouts or other contrived "bonuses" because Multicrew and Wings would actually be USEFUL in their own right.

 

[Fake Newts]

Lord Braben himself stepped in at the last minute and implemented the Great Multicrew Reward Nerfing. Many a tear was shed that day.

All through its inception equal rewards were what was pitched and planned, Braben didn't like it and nipped it in the bud just before it came out.

This isn't to say they can't change it, but something that the overlord actually stepped in to enact may have less chance of revision.

edit: his reason was "it allowed people to bypass the small ship stage of the game", which is already achievable with R2R, Robigo, Void Opals, Mission Spam etc, so IMHO it seems like a much better option to allow and promote cooperative play as a viable alternative, but what do I know. I am not Sir David.

 

[Sylow]

But realism isn't the main reason I'm advocating for split shareable payments of ALL activities between wing members. It's mostly a matter of practicality and internal consistency. It's better to have one rule that applies across many similar domains, than a bunch of unique one-off rules for each circumstance, especially when all those circumstances (multiple players collaborating on one task) appear to be very similar.

But it is consistent in a way. I mean, we don't know how the replacement of CGs will work yet. So i have to use the old CGs as an example. Yes, rewards scaled a bit on how much you contributed, but even if you for example brought just one ton of what was asked for, you were already in for good money.

On how things are handled in game: do we know it's not like that: "want to hire freelancer team, no more than 3 or 4 people, am willing to pay X per person"? Considering how barebone information is displayed in game, the limit here is your imagination.

I'm arguing that Wings and Multicrew should just work for all game activities rather than be their own little walled off play date carnival rides. And if those systems functioned well, and served as versatile tools for players to use however they see fit, that there would be no need for multiplied payouts or other contrived "bonuses" because Multicrew and Wings would actually be USEFUL in their own right.

Of course that would be better. How would you do it? A group of people fly in a wing. One flies the freighter, the others are in fighters, in case of a pirate attack. No attack happens, the cargo is delivered. Who should get the money? Why should the others not get it? Keep in mind that FD is absolutely against inter-player trade, so the freighter pilot paying out the rest in credits is no option.

There's plenty of things to be improved. But in the end, to encourage MC, i would give more credits. Considering all the get-money-quick things we already have in game and considering how filthy rich any person who played for some time already is, there's no damage done. It only allows new players to catch up a bit easier by playing together with friends. How wrong can that be?

 

[metatheurgist]

Lord Braben himself stepped in at the last minute and implemented the Great Multicrew Reward Nerfing. Many a tear was shed that day.

All through its inception equal rewards were what was pitched and planned, Braben didn't like it and nipped it in the bud just before it came out.

This isn't to say they can't change it, but something that the overlord actually stepped in to enact may have less chance of revision.

edit: his reason was "it allowed people to bypass the small ship stage of the game", which is already achievable with R2R, Robigo, Void Opals, Mission Spam etc, so IMHO it seems like a much better option to allow and promote cooperative play as a viable alternative, but what do I know. I am not Sir David.

And he was right. R2R wasn't great until the great exploration payout increase. Void opals didn't exist when he stepped in. Early mission spam issues were aberrations that were corrected. It's only now FD have completely given up. Now we have new players floating around in Anacondas that know nothing about the game. I wish he'd step in again.

 

[Fake Newts]

And he was right. R2R wasn't great until the great exploration payout increase. Void opals didn't exist when he stepped in. Early mission spam issues were aberrations that were corrected. It's only now FD have completely given up. Now we have new players floating around in Anacondas that know nothing about the game. I wish he'd step in again.

You missed out a big fat "IMHO" there, even members of the Dev team were opposed to the multicrew nerf. Even with equal pay the amount of money you can get from traditional bounty hunting is beyond trivial.

Fdev haven't "given up" they've, in fact, created the first legitimate goldrush mechanic in the game which is widely enjoyed by new players and harnesses a lot of the desire to progress that fuelled thousands of Robigo burnout cycles since 2015. There have always been players in Anacondas who know nothing about the game, including those who think they do. Trying to play gatekeeper or preserve an imaginary prestige to the bigger ships has never worked in Elite or any other MMO. IMHO.

Edit. Also, R2R has been lucrative for years, actually.

 

[cheesenbiscuits]

Maybe it should scale on your rank so you can’t bypass progression.

 

[Fake Newts]

Maybe it should scale on your rank so you can’t bypass progression.

It does. It scales based on the rank differential between the host and crew. There's a table somewhere that shows how it's calculated. I'll try to find it.

Edit:

Edit 2: this is post-revision payouts. Braben's initial change capped crew rewards at 50%, even with rank parity. This is for bounty vouchers, not trade dividends which are another thing altogether.

 

[Sylow]

Yea. This table is poison. I mean, why are my friends being punished for me increasing my combat rank? Is that really good game design?

 

[Fake Newts]

And he was right. R2R wasn't great until the great exploration payout increase. Void opals didn't exist when he stepped in. Early mission spam issues were aberrations that were corrected. It's only now FD have completely given up. Now we have new players floating around in Anacondas that know nothing about the game. I wish he'd step in again.

I also believe you're conflating two different ideas here, which is your perception of rate of income as a problem, rather than the means of income, which as far as I can tell is the main issue in this thread.

To deal with them separately: personally I don't agree with your assertion that the rate of income is too high, because people who want to bypass the early game progression, to the point they're willing to google it, can and will do so in any number of ways. Moreover them choosing to bypass it or not has zero impact on the game for other players, and most end-game players end up flying a wide selection of ships anyway so it boggles the mind as to why so many people are bothered by this. If you are bothered by it, fair enough though, that's your thang - I can't tell you how to get over it.

However, the problem most people have with the means of income in Elite is to do with the distribution of rewards between activities and is a separate issue to rate. Given the choice of equal time spent doing fun crewmanshippery with your friends in a RES site or monotonously grinding a trade route in solo the vast majority of players would rather do the former, however Elite has always asked that players work elsewhere to ultimately fund activities they enjoy, rather than doing those activities as a direct means of progression. Another good example is engineering, if you want to work towards a more capable combat ship it entails stopping combat for dozens of hours to scour the galaxy for HGEs etc, and for a lot of players the disconnect between enjoyable task and task-related reward is jarring.

Elite also has basically zero risk : reward ratio at all, the most lucrative activities tending to be the most soporific. That is unusual in the industry.

To sum up, the problem people have with multi-crew payments is how low they are relative to rewards from other considerably less companionable or enjoyable activities. If you think void opal payments are 'too high' I might even be persuaded to agree with you, but only in the sense that they eclipse the rewards for other tasks - a discrepancy reduces choice, and devalues skill in other areas.

 

[Sylow]

However, the problem most people have with the means of income in Elite is to do with the distribution of rewards between activities and is a separate issue to rate. Given the choice of equal time spent doing fun crewmanshippery with your friends in a RES site or monotonously grinding a trade route in solo the vast majority of players would rather do the former, however Elite has always asked that players work elsewhere to ultimately fund activities they enjoy, rather than doing those activities as a direct means of progression. Another good example is engineering, if you want to work towards a more capable combat ship it entails stopping combat for dozens of hours to scour the galaxy for HGEs etc, and for a lot of players the disconnect between enjoyable task and task-related reward is jarring.

/sign

Well spotted and well said. You have my admiration.

 

[Skip Rockbounder]

While it works in TV shows and the likes where the Boss and his crew get along famously it can't really work that well in games where the Boss has the ship and faces the rebuy screen, it's her/his ship and he/she has to service it fuel it and buy another one when it goes wrong, we had the same thing in Traveller, role playing games in general are ok between friends and as soon as there's a major expense it must be shared equally... Elite (as far as I understand) can't break the rebuy screen down to 50/50.

Forgive me if I've pointed out the already covered and or the obvious... I just jumped in while having a small brake from real life activities.