Newcomer is Done - quitting for a while - maybe for good

[Lightspeed]

Appreciate your post. I really just want to try out other ships and have fun flying around. \And I agree it's a game, not a job, so if I purchased the game and the horizon pack, what's the issue if I make 100 million an hour? Is it the developers that don't want me to earn milliions or the other PVP'ers. I could understand a loss centered game if people were paying real money to upgrade..but this isn't really a pay to win game. And I get that you don't want to make a game so easy that averyone has the biggest ship after the first week. But it's not my first week...and.....I'm still grinding....and....it get's old....grinding...loosing...grinding...loosing...grinding...loosing.

You need to start thinking: I'm losing my ship .... why am I losing my ship? Is it too weak somewhere? Am I trying to engage the enemy instead of escape? Am I not armed properly? Am I taking avoiding action quickly enough?

It's the kind of game that forces you (or should) to think about these things and either improve yourself in how you interact with other ships, or improve your ship.

I kept losing my T-10 ... really numbingly expensive each time, until I realized I needed to engineer my power distributor to improve it a little, and fit a SLF to give me a fighting chance in battle or in running away. These two things transformed my experience.

They could for you too, if you look at what is going wrong.

 

[CMBDI]

If you're not interested in loss/gain dynamics then this isn't the right game for what you want from it. Loss/gain is a core concept of Elite; it isn't built around upwards-only gameplay progression bars. There's always the potential to fail so hard that you're back in a Sidewinder, but you're never out of the game completely either. You'll still have your piloting skills and world-knowledge to get back on the horse and ride again.

Quite apart from that, what would you do with a billion credits in the first place; do you have a goal that requires those funds? If you were still flying a CobraIII by the time you hit a billion you could actually afford to throw it away hundreds of times in a row and do nothing else. It's what I like about my CZ Vulture; even if I fail spectacularly I can get back in the fight with little loss to a relatively weak bank account for how long I've been playing. Credits are ultimately meaningless in of themselves; they're best considered as a tool to propel other goals.

Good post, and as another poster lamented...it's gotten long...over 10 pages...so I'll move on soon. But to your point, before the new crime system that is what I did, if I got a large bounty I would get a sidewinder and go and get killed. Then they changed it so that crimes are attached to the ship not the player. The dumbest most illogical change to a game I've seen....and not the core dynamic of the game from inception but a new vision of the DE team that is clearly intended to increase losses. So now...as of fairly recently if you get a bounty in your python, then you better pay it off get hit for millions. No more going and getting in your 34,000 credit sidewinder to avoid paying off a million credit bounty...but maybe your are right. If Loss/gain is the core dynamic, then everything the developers do will be to increase loss. And with that I close this thread. Appreciate everyone's input.

Regards, CMBDI, Mike.

 

[ilo]

That's good skimmer play but not five missions...I haven't done a skimmer mission since they nerfed them. I thought you could not stack them. Are you claiming this is one misison shown counted as completion of all 5 missions stacked?

Not 5, there were 10 IIRC.. the video just shows 3 IIRC of them being finished in 2 minutes, the rest followed, you can trust me on this, you can trust to whoever told you it is 20 minutes (or less), this is how it ended:

and yes, this is post nerf..

Even if the same kill doesn't count for different missions (if two missions are from the same faction), there are spots in the outposts (like the one I recorded) where you get 3 skimmers every minute.. it is just boring point and click..

And to finish this whole discussion/debacle about how much time it takes to earn money, this is just ONE mission..

 

[CMBDI]

Just ally up with a few factions in a half decent system. Check out these two local deliveries, they could both be completed in minutes with a Cobra...



And you don’t need an amazing trade rank to get a good return...as you can see, mines currently pathetic...

I wish I new how to put pictures in the post like you did. I tried once but the interface seemed to want a URL. Anyway...just for grins, here are my stats:

Prince of the Empire
combat master
trade broker
explorer pioneer
cqc helpless

fines 78, bounties 852, trading 2million, mining 958k, exploration 234 million. Assets 554 million, spent on ships 297 million, outfitting 690 million, insurance claims 92 for 97 million.

Current bal. 135 million.

I've put in a lot of time to grind and maybe it's as simple as that. Tired of grinding. Time to play something else for a while.

 

[krylite]

I wish I new how to put pictures in the post like you did. I tried once but the interface seemed to want a URL. Anyway...just for grins, here are my stats:

Prince of the Empire
combat master
trade broker
explorer pioneer
cqc helpless

fines 78, bounties 852, trading 2million, mining 958k, exploration 234 million. Assets 554 million, spent on ships 297 million, outfitting 690 million, insurance claims 92 for 97 million.

Current bal. 135 million.

I've put in a lot of time to grind and maybe it's as simple as that. Tired of grinding. Time to play something else for a while.

OP, maybe you could try a different ship than the python. My favorite ship is the cutter, but before I got one, I was dissatisfied with the python as it often got wrecked if it wasn't configured entirely for combat and where I was trying to do other missions with it. I ended up using the FGS mostly on my path to save up for the cutter. The SLF running interference helps a lot when deciding to retreat from an overwhelming situation or just to keep an extra opponent npc ship off of the six, and the FGS can be fairly survivable in a CZ. If the shields run out, the harder hullness factor helps with a resiliency while making an escape. There are also the new ships , the T-10 which is nicely survivable as a tank, and the chieftan, and the challenger coming up in a couple of weeks. So just saying maybe an alternative in ships can help. Have a good break, o7.

 

[ZeroAi]

After 750 hours of this game I'm out. I just can't see why I would waste one more minute of my life in this game. It's not fun to play. The whole game is rigged to prevent progression. I can't tell you how many times I've ended up in the ship of piety with millions of credits lost to rebuy my ship, and lost reputation that has to be rebuilt to get back to the good missions with ally status. I was making 3 to 4 million an hour doing surface scans but the crazy thing is, you get a reward for killing criminal skimmers, but a bounty for hacking the data port. Tell me that isn't stupid. And then, I was stacking the missions per system to make it more efficient but on the third planet 3 ships popped in to claim my big bounty of 30,000. Now admittedly, I was parked on the planet and went to get breakfast. They attacked while I was distracted.

I know this game is rigged to send you NPC attacks if you have a bounty or carry a load, but doesn't it seem that a large million dollar bounty should draw more attraction that few thousand from hacking data ports? Not that hacking a criminal dataport should incur a bounty at all, but still there should be some level of urgency attached to NPC responses.

Bottom line, this last trip to the ship of piety (and why do we have a ship of piety - that's dumb), and I'm set back to where I was a few days ago. I only get to play a few hours on any day and after getting 6 to 8 million on surface scans I lost it all in one encounter. Down 11 million to rebuy my ship. So it really is two steps forward and 3 steps back with this game some times.

I'll tell anyone reading this the only thing I know to collect credits in this game so you can progress. It's not by doing any of the advertised in system missions in the game. The only way in my 750 hours, that I've EVER made good money was in exploration. Going out in the lonely expanse where no one else is, not even NPC's, and doing planet scans. The most I've made that way was 130 million in one trip that took me about a week. That's credit progression, but a long BORING game play mode.

Good luck commanders. Until the developers quit being afraid of letting people make fun gaining credits in this game and until they realize that new content is the real way to keep gamers coming back then this game is doomed to be boring. I'd love to try out some of those other ships but unfortunately I spent so much time trying to figure out other ways to progress and regress that I realize now my only hope is to return to the road to riches. If I return to the game that is where I'll start. I'll fly the road till I get enough to properly outfit an Anaconda...i'm guessing 350 to 400 million. Never going to get there doing deliveries for 50k...just saying. The mission payouts in this game are a joke for everyone but noobs.

You won!

Yes, you spent $60 (or a lot less) on a game that kept you busy for 750 hours! Congrats - that's a great value!

Now, not surprisingly, you sound like you're burned out and ready for a new game.

This is normal.

Put Elite down and go have fun with another game.

And always remember, we work to pay bills, but we game to have fun.

If a game feels like work, it's likely time to move on to a new game!

Fly Safe!

07

 

[Vasco Sapien]

Appreciate your post. I really just want to try out other ships and have fun flying around. \And I agree it's a game, not a job, so if I purchased the game and the horizon pack, what's the issue if I make 100 million an hour? Is it the developers that don't want me to earn milliions or the other PVP'ers. I could understand a loss centered game if people were paying real money to upgrade..but this isn't really a pay to win game. And I get that you don't want to make a game so easy that averyone has the biggest ship after the first week. But it's not my first week...and.....I'm still grinding....and....it get's old....grinding...loosing...grinding...loosing...grinding...loosing.

I honestly dont understand how you can be having so much trouble.

Play Star citizen. Its a pay2win game, for the low price of $27,000 you can buy every ship in game. And flying those ships is just about all you can do right now... (well some of those ships).

 

[Luniticisi]

Appreciate your post. I really just want to try out other ships and have fun flying around. \And I agree it's a game, not a job, so if I purchased the game and the horizon pack, what's the issue if I make 100 million an hour? Is it the developers that don't want me to earn milliions or the other PVP'ers. I could understand a loss centered game if people were paying real money to upgrade..but this isn't really a pay to win game. And I get that you don't want to make a game so easy that averyone has the biggest ship after the first week. But it's not my first week...and.....I'm still grinding....and....it get's old....grinding...loosing...grinding...loosing...grinding...loosing.

If you keep loosing, you might have a hefty cleaning bill on your hands!

(Edit - and I would also book a doctors appointment)

 

[CariadocThorne]

@OP

I think your first mistake is grinding at all.

This game doesn't have "endgame" content which you have to have a fully engineered, A rated Corvette, cutter or Anaconda for.

I have played, as of 2 minutes ago, 1992 hours in this game. I might have spent 20 hours in total grinding, but I doubt it. I had a couple of hours grind when I started, to get into a decently fitted DBS before I logged off on the first day. Since then, I have spent a few hours grinding to get the mats to finish engineering a ship a few times, but even then I have picked up enough mats just wandering through the game at my own pace, that every time I have started engineering a new ship, I already have 90% of the mats needed.

I only just progressed into a Python about a month ago. My total value, including bank balance, Python and stored ships, is 206 million. That's it.

1992 hours played, less than 20 spent grinding, over 1970 hours spent having fun NOT GRINDING.

Secondly, even as someone who doesn't care about credits in the slightest, I still know that you have been taking the wrong approach to getting rich.

A) if you do missions in your SRV, leave the Python at home. About 1million gets you a hauler with a great jump range, decent thrusters and shield, scoop, and an SRV. If that gets blown up or becomes hot, who cares?

B) try passenger missions. Get a type 6 with 4A Shields, 4A scoop, engineered FSD, and 2 cabins (a 5C first class and a 5D business class works best IMO). Costs less than 9 million. Now take 2 or 3 hours getting yourself allied with every faction at your home station. Now pick up 2 passenger missions going to the same first location, and no more than 2-3 different locations. Log to menu and mode swap once or twice if necessary (learning to spot common destinations from your station helps).

I do this as a chilled out way of playing while I sit watching a movie with my wife. Flying out of Diaguandri, I look for sightseeing missions going to Freeholm Victory (because I love visiting that place) + 1-2 other destinations, and make 5-10 million every 20-25 minutes, without really trying.

Do that in a ship with more cabins, with a bit more mode switching, and you could stack more missions and make a lot more money.

Or don't worry about money. It will come in it's own and the only time I hear of people failing to make money is when they try to push to hard and take silly risks or make silly mistakes.

You might not get that A-rated big 3 ship quite as quickly, but you'll actually have fun along the way, and you might just fall in love with a different ship and realize you don't need the big 3 ship at all.

 

[Sebastian Rooks]

After 750 hours of this game I'm out. I just can't see why I would waste one more minute of my life in this game. It's not fun to play. The whole game is rigged to prevent progression. I can't tell you how many times I've ended up in the ship of piety with millions of credits lost to rebuy my ship, and lost reputation that has to be rebuilt to get back to the good missions with ally status. I was making 3 to 4 million an hour doing surface scans but the crazy thing is, you get a reward for killing criminal skimmers, but a bounty for hacking the data port. Tell me that isn't stupid. And then, I was stacking the missions per system to make it more efficient but on the third planet 3 ships popped in to claim my big bounty of 30,000. Now admittedly, I was parked on the planet and went to get breakfast. They attacked while I was distracted.

I know this game is rigged to send you NPC attacks if you have a bounty or carry a load, but doesn't it seem that a large million dollar bounty should draw more attraction that few thousand from hacking data ports? Not that hacking a criminal dataport should incur a bounty at all, but still there should be some level of urgency attached to NPC responses.

Bottom line, this last trip to the ship of piety (and why do we have a ship of piety - that's dumb), and I'm set back to where I was a few days ago. I only get to play a few hours on any day and after getting 6 to 8 million on surface scans I lost it all in one encounter. Down 11 million to rebuy my ship. So it really is two steps forward and 3 steps back with this game some times.

I'll tell anyone reading this the only thing I know to collect credits in this game so you can progress. It's not by doing any of the advertised in system missions in the game. The only way in my 750 hours, that I've EVER made good money was in exploration. Going out in the lonely expanse where no one else is, not even NPC's, and doing planet scans. The most I've made that way was 130 million in one trip that took me about a week. That's credit progression, but a long BORING game play mode.

Good luck commanders. Until the developers quit being afraid of letting people make fun gaining credits in this game and until they realize that new content is the real way to keep gamers coming back then this game is doomed to be boring. I'd love to try out some of those other ships but unfortunately I spent so much time trying to figure out other ways to progress and regress that I realize now my only hope is to return to the road to riches. If I return to the game that is where I'll start. I'll fly the road till I get enough to properly outfit an Anaconda...i'm guessing 350 to 400 million. Never going to get there doing deliveries for 50k...just saying. The mission payouts in this game are a joke for everyone but noobs.

Oh for heaven's sake. I made 50M this week doing Massacre missions. I wasn't even trying for credits. I chose "influence" rewards most of the time, to help support a faction I wanted in control of a station in my home system. Had I been trying for straight credits, it would have been a substantially higher sum. You can do this with a Vulture, if money is an issue. Bounty hunting at high & haz res sites, can pay even better. Plus, you'll get better at combat. As an added future precaution, menu log before eating and log back in when you're ready to play again. Because you just never know...

Rooks o7

 

[Maymo]

I wish I new how to put pictures in the post like you did. I tried once but the interface seemed to want a URL. Anyway...just for grins, here are my stats:

Prince of the Empire
combat master
trade broker
explorer pioneer
cqc helpless

fines 78, bounties 852, trading 2million, mining 958k, exploration 234 million. Assets 554 million, spent on ships 297 million, outfitting 690 million, insurance claims 92 for 97 million.

Current bal. 135 million.

I've put in a lot of time to grind and maybe it's as simple as that. Tired of grinding. Time to play something else for a while.

I (re)started on Monday at around 1:00pm
Here are my current stats:

As you learn more, you can do more without getting needlessly blown up.

Honestly, when you start feeling burned out but still love and want to play the game, consider clearing your CMDR and have a fresh start. Some of the best fun you can have is in the small ships trying to scrape together a living...

That’s just my opinion of course, most here hate the idea of restarting...

 

[Laste]

I always get a kick when someone puts in enough hours playing this game that they could have got a masters degree in the same time frame, and yet say they are new and are tired of it.
You're not new and if you do almost anything continuously for 750 hours, It might get a little tedious, especially if you just do one thing exclusively.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Yeah I understand your frustration. The root of it is Sandro's obsession with what he explained to us as 'player jeopardy'. They are building a game that prompts you for combat at every single turn, regardless of what you're doing because that's what they want to build.

I also feel that frontier are consciously oblivious to the motives of other play styles apart from combat, and had a hard time accepting this as its ramped up and evolved over the patches. Having said you can adapt over time. Crime and punishment sure has made it sharper.

Im sure the majority of people will disagree, but I liked it better from when I started. Interdictions felt like they were based on a timer since your last one, about one ever 2 hours.. and it was fine. A good reminder you're somewhere. Also you could kill most things with a basic set of guns on your asp so it was enjoyable. Now I'm supposed to be enjoy being in jeopardy, which for what I'm usually doing gives me no choice but to run. Harassed and annoyed and jeopardised.

If you're stuck for credits, find a gold rush and go make your fill. These only look poor because certain players obsess over them. I can accept there is a valid role for credits in the game, and when the times comes for that, that's what gold rushes are for! Ship progression was also fun but that's a different topic.

 

[V'larr]

after 750 hours I understand the game and how to avoid death. Just not sure why I need to avoid it...as I stated in other posts and I'll put it a different way here...there is NO point to insurance and losing millions when you die. Should be a dust yourself off and try again, but some here agree with developers that the game needs negative progression. I however hate it.

With the amount of masochism that seems to abount in the Elite community (from what I've observed), you should consider yourself lucky there's insurance on death at all, instead of simply losing everything and having to start over from square one....

Having a reasonable bit of penalty and risk to failure isn't 'negative progression'. Especially when there's so many things that have to go wrong in order for you to get blown up to begin with, let alone not have enough to make the insurance payout.

I understand it's my own fault. Sure I got lazy playing a game. As I've said elsewhere it's the whole 11 million insurance payout of negative progression that makes me throw in the towel sometimes. Why do we have losses in this game? Ever lost two days of real world work...say a spreadsheet crashed and you lost your data. Remember that pit in your stomach you get when you realize you have to do it all over again. That it what it was like. I spent the time to build up reputation and did the grind over and over...only to lose it all and go backward in the end. This is supposed to a game...something relaxing and fun to engage with, not a real life loss experience.

If you understood this being the consequence of laziness on your part, then I don't think you would have written this thread.

There are things that don't make sense in Elite. Like reducing XP gains by half or worse depending on how many members are in your wing/crew. There's room for improvement in many areas.

But this? This is something that does make sense. Failure begets penalty. Getting your ship blown up is the ultimate form of failure in Elite. Of all the things in the game to create a loss, this would be it! Ships cost money, and the Pilot's Federation is not your unquestioning, unwavering legion of supporters ready to reimburse and support you as their One True Hero. They're a beareaucratic organization with their own agenda and you just happen to be one of its peon members, free to do as you wish and able to enjoy benefits of membership, but nothing more.

And it's not even a big loss. It's a mere fraction of what it could be.

If you're worried about losing data, you make backups, especially if it's important data. If you're worried about losing an expensive ship in Elite, you Don't Fly Without Rebuy.

Perhaps now that you know not to take your ship for granted, you'll learn to value it a bit more?

But I digress. If you are risk-averse, you could always lose yourself playing Grindframe, where the only risk is your sanity as you slowly discover that there is no end to the grind....

 

[ilo]

Yeah I understand your frustration. The root of it is Sandro's obsession with what he explained to us as 'player jeopardy'. They are building a game that prompts you for combat at every single turn, regardless of what you're doing because that's what they want to build.

I'm not so sure about this. I can't remember how many 'combat prompts' I got in the last 6 months, but I'd say it was just one random npc asking for my cargo, which I even dropped, while I spent 50% moving around in a hostile system to my PP, with a bounty, in open.

 

[CariadocThorne]

Yeah I understand your frustration. The root of it is Sandro's obsession with what he explained to us as 'player jeopardy'. They are building a game that prompts you for combat at every single turn, regardless of what you're doing because that's what they want to build.

Are you serious? It's Elite. It is supposed to be set in a dangerous universe. And no, not because it's called Eliteangerous, but because that's just the elite universe.

The NPCs are already stupidly dumbed down, and not even half as dangerous as the npcs in the original game over 30 years ago, and you get attacked by a lot fewer of them at a time, and a lot less often.

This game is not euro truck simulator. That doesn't mean you shouldn't spend your time "space trucking", that's a totally valid play style, however dismissive some people may be of it. But you aren't trucking in ETS, you're trucking in Elite, and that means you are going to get attacked now and then.

If there wasn't "player jeopardy" it simply wouldn't be Elite.

 

[Gizoux]

Again, I'll state that I'm not rich, either. My new Python could use those military bulkheads, but I just have 21MCr at the moment (which could also mean two rebuys). I'm just picking up missions "source and return" "delivery" "data delivery" and "easy assassinations." Sure, I'm not making 120MCr an hour, but is 1.5 MCr per hour just not worth it? Never mind bounty hunting in a Hi-RES, that pays 2-2.5MCr per hour. And if you have a Python, it is possible to do a "wing delivery" mission of 1000tons for a few MCr. That's just five trips solo. These missions are also less risky, so you will be spending less on insurance claims, and can also be a lot quicker if you don't make planetary landings.

I find it odd that you lost so much face with the factions that you failed missions for, did you go down to Neutral? I'm asking because I've also failed missions, but even if I dropped to Friendly, it wasn't hard to regain it. I'm sure that even that bad a hit will only take adding a few boom data deliveries on each visit to mend your status. If you failed really bad, just visit a new system and curry favor there. I find it takes much less time than it used to

Don't overlook your cheaper ships. Unless I have 75+ tons of cargo to move, my Eagle, 'Winder or Cobra that I went through the trouble of engineering are among the most enjoyable ships to pilot because they're so fast and agile, and in the case of scan missions, are probably your wisest choices. Otherwise, I swap between my Asp X and my Python depending on how much freight I'm going to be shifting. Or my FAS for combat.

I'm not insensitive to wanting to have the credits to shop for different ships and try them all out, I'd also like to have tried out a bunch of ships to see if there's something I like more. I believe the difference, however, is that I'm in no hurry to have them. The game will be there when I get there, and it won't bother me if I buy a 'Conda in October and have it A-Rated in December. I'm probably about the only person who has 700+ hours on this game and has yet to own a Chieftain. I would think that the easiest way to become miserable in this game would be to compare myself with all those billion credit salt farmers who get bored and start ganking players because it's the only thing the game has left for them.

Anyway, In spite of what I've just said, don't feel too bad about taking a break. But as you can probably gain from the less caustic replies in the thread, you made some mistakes, and if you decide to learn from them, then you can cut a profit, even if you have the odd claim to make later. It'll be there when you come back. Just come back later and give it a couple of sessions to make sure.

 

[Dharrch Streynjer]

Just in case nobody has mentioned it. Source and return wing missions are the best way to make money right now.
I average over 100mil/hr on a good day with a wing of two Cutters/T9s more if I can gather a wing of four.
Look for missions that need high value comodities as you can easily make around 20mil per mission requiring only one jump each for a 4 ship wing.
Don't try it alone as it is possible to make a loss on high value goods when solo.

o7

 

[Dharrch Streynjer]

Don't overlook your cheaper ships. Unless I have 75+ tons of cargo to move, my Eagle, 'Winder or Cobra that I went through the trouble of engineering are among the most enjoyable ships to pilot because they're so fast and agile, and in the case of scan missions, are probably your wisest choices. Otherwise, I swap between my Asp X and my Python depending on how much freight I'm going to be shifting. Or my FAS for combat.

I'm not insensitive to wanting to have the credits to shop for different ships and try them all out, I'd also like to have tried out a bunch of ships to see if there's something I like more. I believe the difference, however, is that I'm in no hurry to have them. The game will be there when I get there, and it won't bother me if I buy a 'Conda in October and have it A-Rated in December. I'm probably about the only person who has 700+ hours on this game and has yet to own a Chieftain. I would think that the easiest way to become miserable in this game would be to compare myself with all those billion credit salt farmers who get bored and start ganking players because it's the only thing the game has left for them.

Hehe if you think that you're patient. I've been waiting since 1984 for 'Space Legs' LoL.

I too leave my big ships at home and troll the Haz Res's for bounties in my I-Eagle. Them things is fast man :¬)
Even if I take my Cutter out I will often leave my crew to fly it while I batter them big ships with the SLF. They are so much fun to fly.

Oh and I suppose I would fall under the banner of 'Salt farming billionaire with nothing left to do' except that despite earning my billions the hard way (no exploits), I haven't even come close to being bored yet. There's always one more thing to do in this game.

o7

 

[Quantis Trap]

OP, when you quit the game, you really shouldn't loiter in the forum! Loitering is punishable by ...