I'm not sure I get what you're trying to say here. Are you saying this system shouldn't be changed? Or are you saying that you think it's normal IRL for a retainer to be a percentage of the employer's profits?
NPC Copilots are BROKEN and here's why
- Thread starter DarwinPon
- Start date
Well, it appears you aren't considering the skills involved or the negotiating position, it's all theirs. If you want to pay an Elite skilled person to be available 24 hours and not work for anyone else then yes, you do pay them a lot! You are effectively employing them, and they are negotiating the wage package. They are saying, as an Elite Pilot this is what you need to pay me to be available 24 hours a day, if you don't like it don't employ me. If they demand a percentage of profit to be available that way it's your choice to employ them or not, it's a straight business deal, you know just like in the real world.
My only point is that right now, players have no incentive to have more than one NPC at a time, and active incentive not to have more(as you only ever need one). This means less time leveling up NPCs, which means less time playing the game, which means less profit for fdev in the long term.
Why make a design decision that only reduces their playtime, for no benefit? I certainly can't think of any reason it's good for them to discourage having more than one NPC at a time.
It's not the real world, though. This is a video game, and video games are supposed to be fun, not frustrating. That's why we make millions of credits per hour, rather than 8.75(or whatever minimum wage is where you live), and why we have supercruise rather than spending IRL years traveling between planets. If I wanted to deal with real-life problems, I'd go live in real life, not be playing video games.
Why not focus on what could make the game as fun as possible? If that can exist within the bounds of realism, so much the better, but if it can't, then reality is what should make way; we invent supercruise and stock asteroids with infinite wealth, because that's what's fun.
Why make a design decision that only reduces their playtime, for no benefit? I certainly can't think of any reason it's good for them to discourage having more than one NPC at a time.
It's not the real world, though. This is a video game, and video games are supposed to be fun, not frustrating. That's why we make millions of credits per hour, rather than 8.75(or whatever minimum wage is where you live), and why we have supercruise rather than spending IRL years traveling between planets. If I wanted to deal with real-life problems, I'd go live in real life, not be playing video games.
Why not focus on what could make the game as fun as possible? If that can exist within the bounds of realism, so much the better, but if it can't, then reality is what should make way; we invent supercruise and stock asteroids with infinite wealth, because that's what's fun.
No it just wasn't considered very well when it was designed. A flat percentage which could be slightly reduced by training them yourself is not and never was a good idea. This is not the same as "no fees, no reason, get rid" as per the OP, just bad implementation.
Give me one real world example of retainers being a percentage of the employer's total profits. Like seriously, one, just one.
In real life the employer gets bargaining power too you know, in real life the employer gets to say "ok, you're asking for too much" and go to the next person. And in real life, the employee would say "you know what, I'm just going to take my fair share of what I actually worked for otherwise some other guy is going to take this job".
You can't make a "real world" argument without bringing in the full real world logic. Not to mention it's rather dumb to make a real world argument in a computer game in the first place. Features are not designed for the sake of realism, but for game experience. Like, how does it make sense you can fill your O2 by synthesizing 10 units of Iron and Nickle? In fact, how does it make sense that you can manufacture literally everything on-ship, using materials that cost 0 storage space? Because it makes sense for game design to cut the player a break when it benefits game experience!
@Pphree I think you should read this part as well, hopefully it addresses some of what you were talking about.
I like what you're laying down.
Would be nice to see hired crew be more involved.
Hired crew seem kind of nothing more than credit stealing jpegs as they are.
Some more emphasis on their specializations they state, and even have them tag along with you on-foot in Odyssey would be some creative gameplay.
I can't say FDev would really go that extra step though.
Would be nice to see hired crew be more involved.
Hired crew seem kind of nothing more than credit stealing jpegs as they are.
Some more emphasis on their specializations they state, and even have them tag along with you on-foot in Odyssey would be some creative gameplay.
I can't say FDev would really go that extra step though.
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It's not an argument, it's an analogy. An analogy that recognises, unlike such absolute declaratives, that it is not possible or even the point to literally compare like for like in every way.
Nobody but nobody is arguing that we wouldn't like crew to cost less and be able to do more, or against the payment system being less silly.
And what I've been saying literally since the start, is that this analogy is a very bad one and doesn't apply here at all. When you're designing a game, you don't take the real world and remove things you don't like. Quite the opposite, you take an empty space and you decide what elements of the real world (or of imagination) you want to put in. And it's just a really terrible and amateur design move to add a copilot upkeep cost in the first place, before we even begin to consider HOW it should be added into the game. The first question is always "does this feature have a reason to be here" instead of "how should we implement this feature". It's a VERY common mistake in software design in general.
Also, if you want the system changed but have slightly different opinions on how to do it, then the tactical move is to express your ideas of what should or should not be changed, instead of going after me with a metaphorical axe like you just did. It's just bad tact. We stand a better chance of getting the devs to take this issue seriously if they see where we agree more than we disagree.
Aaand another one who didn't even bother to read my full post. If you have the time to search for an image and make a comment, shouldn't you also have the time to actually read what you're commenting on?
- A-list actors routinely get a percentage of profit
- There are countless profit-sharing companies that distribute a percentage of profits to employees
- All shareholders of a corporation get a percentage of profits
- Sales people get commissions which are percentages of sales and come out of company profits
But, the beautiful thing is, if you don't like the terms, you're not forced to do it.
A-list actors routinely get a percentage of profit: They are self-employed and only get percentages on projects they actually worked on. A proper analogy would be someone getting 10% of Disney Corp's profits because they occasionally appear in a show, which doesn't exist.
There are countless profit-sharing companies that distribute a percentage of profits to employees: because these employees actually work in the company and contribute to its profits! These are not retainers! An appropriate example would be a 3rd party consultant of YouTube being paid 10% of Alphabet's yearly profits, which doesn't exist.
All shareholders of a corporation get a percentage of profits: because they all actually contribute to that company and its profits. Spotting a pattern yet?
Sales people get commissions which are percentages of sales and come out of company profits: because they actually work on those projects and the company's profits depend on their work.
OMG, I don't know how many times I need to repeat myself before the message finally sinks in. This should not be this hard to understand.
Oh, it's easy to understand. And I mostly agree with you. It's just fun trolling you.
I've often thought it'd be more fair if the pilots got a weekly stipend plus a percentage of ship-to-ship combat revenue.
I have no problem with challenging, but challenging ≠ painful. This mechanism is not challenging in anyway but is painful in every way.Pretty sure it's supposed to be challenging
lol okay
Pretty sure it's supposed to be challenging
Both fun and challenging, ideally. But really, having three elite npcs is neither fun or challenging. I'd absolutely be down with some sort of challenging and fun way of keeping their prices low. Maybe they have preferred activities; go kill a thargoid and do a passenger mission and pow, they're happy for a week.
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More expensive in the long run though.
I've got 3 NPCs. One is Elite taking 10% the other two are harmless taking a percent or two.
Its not something i even think about with how easy credits are to make.
I've literally see people complain about their NPCs having taken 1 billion, which means they have at pocketed at least 9 billion.
It makes me laugh.
Anyway, disagree with your TL;DR - the best version is not to hire and fire. The best version is to train up to elite, because they are significantly better.