My, how times have changed...

[mpfj]

Agreed OP.

Been playing since Premium Beta and I've still only have 200M in the bank.

I enjoyed working up through the ships. I think I went sidewinder, adder, hauler cobra, T6, T7, python, T9 (possibly my favourite!!), Anaconda and now exploring in an Asp.

 

[Lucius-Darcia]

I was going though my video archives and found a video recorded on June 6, 2015. I must have just started playing as I was in a Sidey with 22,000 credits. I must have had a good day as I was turning in 16,000 in bounties! I must have thought I was rich! The next day I turned in 25,000 in bounties on the next video.

Looking ahead to September 20, 2015 I was flying an Eagle (oh how I loved that ship back then!) and had a whopping 388,000 in the bank. I remember the agonizing decisions of whether to up grade, buy a new ship or to hold off for a while. Money was always short and not so easy to come by in those days so each decision was important and affected my game. I think of those who are starting out now and how different the game is and how easy money is... I wouldn't trade my early days for theirs, not for a minute. The galaxy was a more dangerous place then. At times the game was (is) very frustrating and then I found the forums and things got better... A big hats off to all of those whom have helped me along the way.

Fly safe commanders!

o7

oh dear,
this time where i bought from my first money a Cobra, just to realize she was too expensive for me so i was going for the Hauler where i have spend weeks and i had a LOT of fun in it. most new players just step up about the hauler and use him later as taxi if ever.....
than i saved up my money for a Type-6 which i have flowen 2 months until i gave the stock-E Asp a try. these days were great! i remembered these days, where robigo with 30mil an evening was called an exploit, when i have seen that my bank has growen at 100mil in one evening through normal BGS work and missions :/
i felt so sad and wish back the old times so much that i think about a reset of my account to start over again.

 

[Macy]

1000,000 cr was a fortune back then. Now its considered a low payment. If i got 5000cr from killing a pirate i was happy as a pig in sh..
I went from Sidewinder, Viper, cobra, Vulture, Aspx then Python, it took ages. Each ship was important and valuable to me. Now its all about "millions per hour".

 

[Thetele]

It certainly has become easier to make money there's no doubt about that. Having said that, it's still possible for a new player to stay in a sidewinder for a week, if they wanted to. It just seems that most people don't want to.

I have to say when i started my current character after reset back in the gamma in December 2014. I made from side winder to viber mk III in one afternoon. It wasn't that hard even back then. But back then trading was only thing that scaled with ship size, so after reaching cobra mk III only trading profits per hour increased when moving to bigger ships. Today how ever stuff scale much better, larger ships for combat and missions make sense and have benefits now. But now there isn't any low profit missions, same missions for everyone regardless of their situation is bad idea, it was back then and still is. Back then too low paying for those who had played over 15 hours and today too good for new players. The income, mission rewards and ship/equipment/module/rebuy costs don't scale same way and in same phase.

 

[Stealthie]

Must say, it does seem like some people want everything handed to them on a plate, with no waiting, these days.

"Why can't I earn Cr10m/hr?"
"Why does it take days to rank-up enough to buy a Corvette?" (irony intentional)
"Why cant I find/carry enough materials so I can make G5 upgrades to 10 ships all at the same time?"
"Mining sucks cos I can't earn a bazillion credits per hour"
"Exploring sucks cos I can't earn a bazillion credits per hour"
"Missions suck cos I can't get enough of them to earn a bazillion credits an hour"
"I have to stack heaps of skimmer/scanner missions to earn a bazillion credits an hour"
"Missions are boring cos they're all the same"
"It's not fair that they're nerfing mission stacking so I can't earn a bazillion credits an hour any more"

Those people seem to forget that they're playing a game and the only reason they are upset about those things is because they're fixating on them instead of just enjoying the game.

 

[Luniticisi]

100% with you OP!

These days you can be out of your sidewinder in under 10 mins! .. where is the fun in that!

 

[Darkphoenix]

Gotta say I agree OP, I have been playing since premium beta and just came back from a long break from the game about a month ago. I played constantly before my break and managed to sell off my fleet to purchase a Cutter. got burned out trying to get the money to upgrade it so that is when I went on my Fallout 4 kick and played that instead. I am in shock at how easy it is to earn money now compared to even back when I sold everything to get the Cutter.....back then a mission for 200k was like a gold mine opportunity mission that you were lucky to see a few of during an evenings play. Now I find myself dismayed if I don't see even a few missions that have payouts of over a million credits at each stop along the way. On one hand I like it as it made outfitting the Cutter possible in just over a month without cheap mode switching exploits, but on the other I miss the feeling of playing an entire evening for a few million credits.

The worst part is I see this as a runaway train that will only get worse as more and more expensive and bigger and bigger ships get released. I think that when/if the 2000t capable cargo capacity Panther gets released that to compensate for the ridiculous amounts of money necessary for its upgrades we will see another bump in mission payouts and at that time missions for less than 5 million each will seem piddley.

 

[Pville_Piper]

There is a dilemma: if money is to hard to get, then PvP is impossible because of insurances costs; If money is too easy, then ships are too easy to buy (and reaching the endgame too quickly).

It surprises me how hard it is for ED to find a solution to balance both horns, and to the money situation in general (as in Multicrew, why not cap the rewards by rank instead of simple duplicates?). Moreover, the game has a noticeable tendency to repetitive mechanics, and even with the diversity of missions, they tend to feel the same. So to make money to hard would expose the game to more criticism about it being too grindy.

Balancing is very easy... Right up until you put humans into the mix. And by that I specifically mean gamers who spend endless hours of time trying to figure out how to do an end run around something!

oh dear,
this time where i bought from my first money a Cobra, just to realize she was too expensive for me so i was going for the Hauler where i have spend weeks and i had a LOT of fun in it. most new players just step up about the hauler and use him later as taxi if ever.....

Yeah, I had a couple of those advance and fall backs myself. I bought the Hauler and sold after a few days... After spending a lot of time in the Eagle the view out the cockpit felt like I was flying with blinders on! Way too restrictive.

I have to say when i started my current character after reset back in the gamma in December 2014. I made from side winder to viber mk III in one afternoon.

Key phrase here is "after I reset my save"... You all ready had a good idea of how the game was played. When I started to play the game there was no such thing as a million dollar mission and without any friends I had a terrible time figuring out the basic of the game like wanted status and fines... I even reset my save once because I didn't want the bad reputation!

All that being said I have to say I don't hate the money, it has made it very easy to get my Python... Heck, I A-rated the Dropship I was using for mining the day I bought it. I recently got up to 100 million for the first time in the game and I went on a buying spree, got down to 49 million and a week later I'm back up to 90 million... Without trying! Very easy to do when you have a mining Python. And storage makes it very easy for me to switch out modules and presto! She's a cargo hauler! Fun ship.

Those people seem to forget that they're playing a game and the only reason they are upset about those things is because they're fixating on them instead of just enjoying the game.

The biggest issue is many of them grind for the money and have no clue as to what else the game offers... What? I can't 10 million an hour exploring?!!!

 

[Ryan P Bodfirst]

I do agree with the OP. For me the gradual progression is part of the elite magic - but it clearly isn't for all...
I tested restarting in the 2.3 beta just recently- went straight into the mission page and there was a mission to take 4t 6ly for 120k. I took it, got no hostiles, docked at the next station and bought an adder with 40k to spare....
Beginner or not - surely that's not the developers vision is it?

Besides that I can't for the life of me work out why they would pay this much for such a risk free delivery mission.... I thought the original mission payouts scaled much better.

A friend at work started the game recently and was a bit disappointed when he could take a couple of missions and get into an a rated viper and then do a community goal, drop off a ton and upgrade to an A rated cobra. He expected to have more of a journey and feel some attachment to the early ships.

 

[Trueno33]

OP, I´m indeed very glad to have experienced those days. Getting a new ship was something back then...