Nothing to Do...

[Schmack]

As I sit idly by at such and such Station in such and such System, in my so and so ship.. I cannot muster the will power to launch. That's because there's nothing for me to do once I launch. Let me explain:

I am a bounty hunter by trade. I have made my fortune bounty hunting and I have enough to get any ship I want and outfit it how I like. I've traded as well, when the price is right, but it's not my ball of wax. I've explored and have Surveyor rank and about to go to the next level, but almost all my exploring has been in the process of doing something else where I was looking for actual information, not just out to collect exploration credits. Still, exploration is ok, I like it better than trading, but it's still doesn't motivate me much. I am not much on pirating because I don't care for the concept of being wanted. I like to run a clean operation, get in, lay the schmack down, get out. Can you smell what I'm cooking?

Why is there nothing to do though? There's PP and I am pledged. There's Navies on both sides and I have rank in one. There are factions that need help and I am allied with many of them and friendly with almost all of them it seems. So why nothing to do?

It's quite simple: Every aspect of the game that I find entertaining is basically broken. There's no decent bounty hunting, nothing worth the sit down and time required to become engaged in it. I don't mean from a credit standpoint although, let's be honest, you have to make something to support your habit in the game.. galactic operations aren't free. Fuel prices, ship repair, modules, penalties and such, they add up. Plus, you want to bring home the bacon (Bacon Port not withstanding) when you go out and engage for a couple hours in your craft, whatever route you chose. I mean from a gaming standpoint. You go out to a Res site and it's comparatively broken. You go to a conflict zone and it's comparatively broken. You go for PP kills for merits and you get 100Cr for killing an anaconda. Not something I want to pay 30K repair costs for (never even mind you battleship financiers paying a small fortune for repairs). You try to rank up, and the ascension missions are broken, you can complete them but you get no rank increase. (Love how FD addressed it, putting people back to where they were before 1.3... wow, but it still exists). The PP numbers are broken. Even trade is goofy. You find something amazing and the powers that be scramble to nerf it right away.. must get a grip on that one first I suppose.

So what's left to do? Fly to Sag A? With the HC glitch, you can't go anywhere out there and if you report it guess where you end up after weeks in the unknown? Back at the last landing pad you were on prior to your two week journey (or however long it takes you to go 25KLY).

So it's a Mexican standoff basically. I have my kitted out ships, Cobra, Vulture, Python and Asp all sitting idly by because I cannot find anything to do that will actually do what it's supposed to do. I will lose interest in a few weeks if not days, and never play the game again (not a rage quit thread). I'd think a lot of people would.

This stuff happens with such a all encompassing update that was rolled out 1 week after beta. Growing pains no doubt, but video games are impulse driven commodities. We play because we get hooked on one. Getting unhooked only requires we not play it for a while, and when we can't play it, that's a forgone conclusion.

Oh well. Still looks pretty, sitting by the dock of the bay.. watching the time roll away... watching the ships roll in, and then I watch them roll away again...

 

[Calvert]

Yeah, quite a lot did get broken this past week and fixes often broke other stuff. Not great, but if the fixes roll in over the next week I think all will be ok. I think res hunting is headed back to normal but we have adjudication errors logging on and some weird pp stuff, so yeah, not great but I'm not likely to disappear anytime soon and I'm sure I'm not alone.

 

[nighthawk71]

With regards to the "ending up back at the last station upon disconnection" thing, I believe they changed that to "one of the last 5 systems before disconnection in hyperspace". Even then, that bug was very specific, and according to Michael Brookes, between 90-100 people had that bug.

 

[Mohrgan]

I'm sorry, but I am in the directly opposite position. I would like to putter around in my new DB-X ( A fun ship, but just a novelty thing). But, I keep finding lucrative Kill missions of all sorts to keep me from changing ships. I have earned enough profit to have already payed for the A-Rated Diamondback, in less than a week. As a BH I am making credits like crazy. That goes nicely with the fact that the credits are just icing on the cake. I get to blow ships up, and make in-game-bank.

One thing that has changed; SC is much more profitable now. I finally fit out an Interdictor. and it is a real money maker. Pulling Wanted ships out of SC while I wait for my Targets has been worth a good chunk of change.

My guess is, that it's not the missions, nor PP, but it's more like you have burnt your self out. If you wanted to fly, you would fly.

 

[Schmack]

Yeah, quite a lot did get broken this past week and fixes often broke other stuff. Not great, but if the fixes roll in over the next week I think all will be ok. I think res hunting is headed back to normal but we have adjudication errors logging on and some weird pp stuff, so yeah, not great but I'm not likely to disappear anytime soon and I'm sure I'm not alone.

I get deferred adjudication..

No seriously, I get the errors as well every single time I log on initially (if that make sense). I don't care so much, it's just a small time sink. What I do care about is that the parts of the game I loved were destroyed in the name of "balance" or what the hell ever, if that's even the reason. There's always someone complaining that the game is too easy, some grinder who spends a lifetime in the game and has triple elite status and every ship at every station, in all stations. They say it needs to be harder, so it becomes harder, but being harder in some instances means not being fun. I don't need a challenge. I get enough of that in my job, saving lives. I want to float around out there and do what I did before the update. I wish we could have elected to not be updated.

 

[Klab]

I hear ya Schmack, I'm currently sitting in dock collecting 50 PP goods every 30mins while I read the paper. Can't be bothered to launch til I get a full hold in a few hours time. Meanwhile I will potter about the house doing this n that, returning every 30mins to make my collection so I can keep my rank 5. Not exactly what I had in mind when I bought this game for sure....

 

[Schmack]

I'm sorry, but I am in the directly opposite position. I would like to putter around in my new DB-X ( A fun ship, but just a novelty thing). But, I keep finding lucrative Kill missions of all sorts to keep me from changing ships. I have earned enough profit to have already payed for the A-Rated Diamondback, in less than a week. As a BH I am making credits like crazy. That goes nicely with the fact that the credits are just icing on the cake. I get to blow ships up, and make in-game-bank.

One thing that has changed; SC is much more profitable now. I finally fit out an Interdictor. and it is a real money maker. Pulling Wanted ships out of SC while I wait for my Targets has been worth a good chunk of change.

My guess is, that it's not the missions, nor PP, but it's more like you have burnt your self out. If you wanted to fly, you would fly.

It's ironic that I burnt myself out right after PP was introduced and all these things broke. I don't want to cruise around in SC interdicting ships. Maybe I should want to, but I don't. I don't know why. I guess it's got a lot to do with seeing the interdictor for sale at every outfitting location when I couldn't even find a fuel scoop. It's like the game was pushing you to outfit a certain way and I refuse.

I'd like to putter around in some imperial ships as well if I could get the ranking missions to work. Unfortunately I have no imperial rank so I cannot buy what I want, and I cannot get the rank because the missions are broke, but then that happened right as I burnt out it seems.

No, trust me. If I was burnt out I would find something else. Don't mistake broken game mechanics for game saturation. Else most people wouldn't bother to post about it. I got burnt out with Space Engineers, but never posted a single thing about it.

 

[emacinnes]

As I sit idly by at such and such Station in such and such System, in my so and so ship.. I cannot muster the will power to launch. That's because there's nothing for me to do once I launch. Let me explain:

I am a bounty hunter by trade. I have made my fortune bounty hunting and I have enough to get any ship I want and outfit it how I like. I've traded as well, when the price is right, but it's not my ball of wax. I've explored and have Surveyor rank and about to go to the next level, but almost all my exploring has been in the process of doing something else where I was looking for actual information, not just out to collect exploration credits. Still, exploration is ok, I like it better than trading, but it's still doesn't motivate me much. I am not much on pirating because I don't care for the concept of being wanted. I like to run a clean operation, get in, lay the schmack down, get out. Can you smell what I'm cooking?

Why is there nothing to do though? There's PP and I am pledged. There's Navies on both sides and I have rank in one. There are factions that need help and I am allied with many of them and friendly with almost all of them it seems. So why nothing to do?

It's quite simple: Every aspect of the game that I find entertaining is basically broken. There's no decent bounty hunting, nothing worth the sit down and time required to become engaged in it. I don't mean from a credit standpoint although, let's be honest, you have to make something to support your habit in the game.. galactic operations aren't free. Fuel prices, ship repair, modules, penalties and such, they add up. Plus, you want to bring home the bacon (Bacon Port not withstanding) when you go out and engage for a couple hours in your craft, whatever route you chose. I mean from a gaming standpoint. You go out to a Res site and it's comparatively broken. You go to a conflict zone and it's comparatively broken. You go for PP kills for merits and you get 100Cr for killing an anaconda. Not something I want to pay 30K repair costs for (never even mind you battleship financiers paying a small fortune for repairs). You try to rank up, and the ascension missions are broken, you can complete them but you get no rank increase. (Love how FD addressed it, putting people back to where they were before 1.3... wow, but it still exists). The PP numbers are broken. Even trade is goofy. You find something amazing and the powers that be scramble to nerf it right away.. must get a grip on that one first I suppose.

So what's left to do? Fly to Sag A? With the HC glitch, you can't go anywhere out there and if you report it guess where you end up after weeks in the unknown? Back at the last landing pad you were on prior to your two week journey (or however long it takes you to go 25KLY).

So it's a Mexican standoff basically. I have my kitted out ships, Cobra, Vulture, Python and Asp all sitting idly by because I cannot find anything to do that will actually do what it's supposed to do. I will lose interest in a few weeks if not days, and never play the game again (not a rage quit thread). I'd think a lot of people would.

This stuff happens with such a all encompassing update that was rolled out 1 week after beta. Growing pains no doubt, but video games are impulse driven commodities. We play because we get hooked on one. Getting unhooked only requires we not play it for a while, and when we can't play it, that's a forgone conclusion.

Oh well. Still looks pretty, sitting by the dock of the bay.. watching the time roll away... watching the ships roll in, and then I watch them roll away again...

Are you not doing the bounty hunting missions from the bulletin board? you'll need to do a res or something to gain positive REP, but once you do, there should be some nifty bounty hunting missions to do that are fun and well worth the time. You'll need an interdictor.

 

[Schmack]

I hear ya Schmack, I'm currently sitting in dock collecting 50 PP goods every 30mins while I read the paper. Can't be bothered to launch til I get a full hold in a few hours time. Meanwhile I will potter about the house doing this n that, returning every 30mins to make my collection so I can keep my rank 5. Not exactly what I had in mind when I bought this game for sure....

I couldn't do that. I guess that's why I am a bounty hunter, probably more suited to pick and pop games than sit and wait games, although I do love a good game of chess.

 

[Eric Sheppard]

Let me get this straight. That RES don't have any powerful ships now is supposed to be INTENTIONAL? So that players who used to hunt in RES sites now have to sit around idly in supercruise, waiting for a lucrative target to drop by, and praying that the broken interdiction mechanic doesn't suddenly lag out when you've almost got your prey? Their excuse is that it balances the game? Great. Fantastic. This thing already involves more grinding than any Korean MMORPG, why not simply take the fun out of the gameplay?

 

[Schmack]

Are you not doing the bounty hunting missions from the bulletin board? you'll need to do a res or something to gain positive REP, but once you do, there should be some nifty bounty hunting missions to do that are fun and well worth the time. You'll need an interdictor.

Yeah, I've made a few hundred million already. I'll wait for the game to be "fixed" before I do more outfitting and chasing things, but I do appreciate the information. It's something to think about. Certainly wasn't intending to lodge a cry fest, just a passing thought that rambled on.

- - - Updated - - -

Let me get this straight. That RES don't have any powerful ships now is supposed to be INTENTIONAL? So that players who used to hunt in RES sites now have to sit around idly in supercruise, waiting for a lucrative target to drop by, and praying that the broken interdiction mechanic doesn't suddenly lag out when you've almost got your prey? Their excuse is that it balances the game? Great. Fantastic. This thing already involves more grinding than any Korean MMORPG, why not simply take the fun out of the gameplay?

I don't know that to be true. I work from the notion that they know what they are doing. If they don't it's even worse than you suggested.

 

[emacinnes]

Let me get this straight. That RES don't have any powerful ships now is supposed to be INTENTIONAL? So that players who used to hunt in RES sites now have to sit around idly in supercruise, waiting for a lucrative target to drop by, and praying that the broken interdiction mechanic doesn't suddenly lag out when you've almost got your prey? Their excuse is that it balances the game? Great. Fantastic. This thing already involves more grinding than any Korean MMORPG, why not simply take the fun out of the gameplay?

Not really, mercenary/bounty/assassination missions from the bulletin board give specific Supercruise targets and relatively speedy resolution, and any regular wanted targets in supercruise are just targets of opportunity on the way. You'll just need the faction rep first to get the good ones. Targets that ask you to shoot police are usually more pricey as there won't be any bounty (which is better, no faffy 1200cr at VeryFarAwayStation).

Plus, Mike B just announced in his dev diary that RESes are not spawning as expected and they are working on it.

 

[drhay53]

FDev has confirmed that RES are bugged. Do a little looking around and you'll find the posts. They still aren't working as intended.

 

[Zetta]

Linking said post

It's fair to say that the resource extraction sites aren't working as expected at the moment. The following changes were made for 1.3:

- Added in the new ships for each of the archetypes that spawn into RES locations. There are now between 4-7 different ship types that each of the 3 spawn maintainers can choose from. There’s also a nice selection of different scenarios for each scenarion to choose from.
- Smoothed out spawning by delaying some of the ships. Same number of ships will eventually appear after approximately 30-90 seconds, it was merely added in to reduce any heavy load slowdown when you first arrive at a RES site.
- Made high, normal and low intensity also mean high, normal and low skill for the ships that spawn into the RES site.
- Balance of high intensity is in favour of pirates and security ships for low intensity.

At the moment it seems that these are sometimes working and sometimes not so we're investigating why this is the case.

Michael

 

[emacinnes]

Linking said post

It does work sometimes, though I find I have to Quit to Menu and Start >=4 times to get the proper High RES to trigger.

 

[Schmack]

Not really, mercenary/bounty/assassination missions from the bulletin board give specific Supercruise targets and relatively speedy resolution, and any regular wanted targets in supercruise are just targets of opportunity on the way. You'll just need the faction rep first to get the good ones. Targets that ask you to shoot police are usually more pricey as there won't be any bounty (which is better, no faffy 1200cr at VeryFarAwayStation).

Plus, Mike B just announced in his dev diary that RESes are not spawning as expected and they are working on it.

Does this have anything to do with the USS sites that have absolutely nothing in then when you drop out? Most systems I've been in where assassinations are needed, there's nothing there but maybe some WSS biowaste and the target. You get the target, but you don't get the rank. I don't want to cruise all over the place looking for a 160K kill. I could make that in no time in a Res site and chose my target. So either it's about the Cr or it's about wanting to have assassinations under your belt and please the powers that be, that stuff is quirky. I see ships in SC quite often, but what happens in SC doesn't stay in SC. It transitions to a drop out and then you fight one ship and then you have to get back into SC. We see that countdown too often already.

I approach the game much like a Hans Solo would, not going to do anything I don't want to do and don't care who wants it. If it pays well, I'll consider it, but don't lowball me when there are exponentially better rewards for the ring just over there, in this system.

 

[Thoemse]

Why not try something new?
I am having more fun then i had in ages.
I pledged to Arissa Duval and did some merits runs. I decided that flying back and forth with these "token" for merits is just a different trade grind so i bought an imperial courier and went to "Winters space" with it. I am undermining winters now and it is great fun.
An anaconda shot my courier down to 55% with cracks all over my canopy. Sneaked into an outpost with silent running (37k bounty on my head) to repair only to find out it does not offer repairs. Did the same with a coriolis station to finally get my ship fixed up again.

this will get old over time again but for now the new patch made ED fun again for me.

 

[emacinnes]

Does this have anything to do with the USS sites that have absolutely nothing in then when you drop out? Most systems I've been in where assassinations are needed, there's nothing there but maybe some WSS biowaste and the target. You get the target, but you don't get the rank. I don't want to cruise all over the place looking for a 160K kill. I could make that in no time in a Res site and chose my target. So either it's about the Cr or it's about wanting to have assassinations under your belt and please the powers that be, that stuff is quirky. I see ships in SC quite often, but what happens in SC doesn't stay in SC. It transitions to a drop out and then you fight one ship and then you have to get back into SC. We see that countdown too often already.

Assassination targets now appear in SC. You can still go to the USS, but there's no need. They are usually in a wing. I interdict them when I see them in SC, then rip em apart. If you're doing one with a count, i.e. 8 police targets, then their call for reinforcements gets stronger the further into the count you get. I'm "deadly" rank at the moment, and these missions currently go for about 400,000 to 600,000. Plus there's the occasional "Anaconda of Opportunity" that's got a 200,000 bounty on it in SC waiting to be interdicted. Occasionally the muppet will interdict me first, and there's also the constant threat of regular police interdiction as my bounty/wanted status is quite high already.

 

[Eric Sheppard]

If that's the case, I hope they can resolve it soon. False alarm, I guess.

 

[Schmack]

FDev has confirmed that RES are bugged. Do a little looking around and you'll find the posts. They still aren't working as intended.

Which is even more depression. No one is flying this ship.

- - - Updated - - -

Assassination targets now appear in SC. You can still go to the USS, but there's no need. They are usually in a wing. I interdict them when I see them in SC, then rip em apart. If you're doing one with a count, i.e. 8 police targets, then their call for reinforcements gets stronger the further into the count you get.

You can't shoot in SC. I'm not shooting feds. Not my thing. I guess I'm old school.

- - - Updated - - -

Why not try something new?
I am having more fun then i had in ages.
I pledged to Arissa Duval and did some merits runs. I decided that flying back and forth with these "token" for merits is just a different trade grind so i bought an imperial courier and went to "Winters space" with it. I am undermining winters now and it is great fun.
An anaconda shot my courier down to 55% with cracks all over my canopy. Sneaked into an outpost with silent running (37k bounty on my head) to repair only to find out it does not offer repairs. Did the same with a coriolis station to finally get my ship fixed up again.

this will get old over time again but for now the new patch made ED fun again for me.

What is the requirement to buy an Imperial Courier? What rank? I have none, can't get one either. I'm not bored. Everything I want to do is broken. What you do I can't do because the path to get there is broken.