[Obsidian Ant] Elite Dangerous - The Credits Problem: A Case of Feeling Unrewarded?

[danteuk]

Why do you have to take on Thargoid with specific ship you didn't have nor you were prepared to do so?

Simple - it's got the best base armour for the size of ship and a SLF - I could use my Anaconda - but the rebuy on that is not a pleasant thought - plus I hate it. I tried using my Python - two rebuys at 6M made me think it's just wasn't tough enough for the job.
Plus I wanted to try a new ship.

I've read lots post of people complaining about grinding ranks and watched videos from Yamiks ranting about how bad and pointless it is - unlike a lot of people I read this stuff and watch the vids and usually decide to try it for myself - the good and the bad stuff.
My verdict is Yamiks was right - it's a pointless grind.

I don't plan on taking on the grind for a Corvette or empire ranked locked ship any time soon!!

 

[Conch]

One of OA vids was about taking on a Thargoid in a Gunship - I thought I'd have a go at that - it's taken almost a week and I'm finally all set to try it tonight.
Why a week? well first I had to rank up from Chief Petty Officer to Ensign to buy a gunship.
This took quiet a few nights of doing BORING missions that made me next to nothing in credits and doing some donation missions - the result is I'm down on credits by about 10M.
So do I feel rewarded for my efforts ? for the hours of dull uneventful gameplay grind ? do I have a sense of achievement ? - No.
Last night I flew to the system where I plan to fight Thargoids in my AspEX ( massively better jump range than gunship ) so then I docked and did the ship transfer to get my gunship to where I need it - that was going to over an hour - so that was that night over with. ( I have a day job, a wife and a dog - gaming time is limited! )

-10M getting rank
-140M getting and fitting Gunship

Tonight I'll take on a Thargoid - this will probably not end well for me - I'm expecting to fail a couple of times ( 6M+ rebuy )
if I actually succeed, then how much will i urn ?

How many Thargoids will I have to kill to get back the 150M I've spend so far on the endeavour ?

75 thargoids before your gunship will make profit.
and that is if you dont die.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

It's a game. It's purpose is to entertain players.

Sure. But how to do that, what kind of entertainment it actually is - is up to developers to decide.

Game can't suit all forms of entertainment. Even such game as ED.

 

[danteuk]

75 thargoids before your gunship will make profit.
and that is if you dont die.

Thanks - I think I'll settle for 1 or 2 kills ( me or them remains to be seen ) - then I'llgo grind Thargoid stuff missions from Obsidian Orbital for a bit - should be able to recoup my loses in a couple of hours.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

My verdict is Yamiks was right - it's a pointless grind.

It is pointless because you didn't get it in five minutes?

 

[danteuk]

It's a game. It's purpose is to entertain players.

Totally agree.
But doing dull repetitive tasks over and over for not lot of credits is not entertainment - it's Real Life!
I have a day job for that!!

I don't want instant access - but a game that rewards skills acquired and experience instead of grind would be a much better game.

Doing take A to station B for X credits missions is not a challenge and not fun, it's like driving to the supermarket for bread and milk - it's a chore, something we have to do.
So if the activity is not rewarding in it's self and the rank and influence is trivial then at least make the credits a reason to do it - right now I look at the mission board and see no reason to do any of those missions - the time / reward ( in credits or fun ) factor is simple not worth it.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

He has 100k subscribers, the vast majority of those are probably active ED players. If he discusses some topic FD does take notice, and he is able to articulate his criticism in a polite non-offensive manner, so my hope is that his message actually reaches the devs. Sure, a rant would be easier. For that, go and watch Yamiks.

Neatly summed up.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

That's incorrect!

Take Quince for example; Initially it was players stacking 20 missions, and scanning one comm point to complete all missions. It was going on for weeks. No-one said a thing. Then Mr. I wanna show you all how great I am, posted it to YouTube. And Quince became the landing site for the 2nd coming of the messiah.

Enter Fdev! Oh! No, that's not how it was intended. We'll fix it!

Enter fix.. Only allow 3 missions, but give extra credits, and still all completed by 1 scan.

Enter the jealous types! Wait that's still not a great fix! Fix it Moars!

Enter new fix which we have now. Result? Absolutely. Quince is empty.

Example 2: Engineer exploit

Known about from beta testing, allowed to enter production

Those who know about it abuse to hell and back

Enter Mr. Look at me, let me show you this exploit!

Enter general outcry, rattles thrown out of prams

Enter FDev. Oh! Wow, we better fix it. And we'll remove all modules too.

-

Unless the general populace knows about and cries about, something, FDev have better things to be doing... Like Planet Coaster or some other game..

The US Congress makes laws the same way, but does a worse job.

 

[MarcusBritish]

Sure. But how to do that, what kind of entertainment it actually is - is up to developers to decide.

It's also up to developers to listen to their customers if they want to maintain their standing... all games eventually lose popularity and sales income drops, and if the dev plans to develop and sell a sequel or release another game they need to have displayed that they were capable of listening to their customer base if they expect those customers to stay loyal and consider buying from them again. Since games evolve, and are not a fixed form of entertainment like a movie, the developer may well decide the initial theme and format, but they should let players determine the direction it evolves in, to a large extent.

 

[danteuk]

It is pointless because you didn't get it in five minutes?

Pointless because it cost me 6-7 hours of game time and cost me 10M credits to move up just two ranks.
I say again - no fun / no sense of achievement / no reward beside the small rank increase vs a lot of time that should be 'game' time and about having fun or being entertained.

6-7 hours of game time doing fun things or being challenged in some way would be worth it - doing dull repetitive task that don't even pay well is 'pointless'.

You might say that there are some more fun missions I could have chosen to take to try and rank up - but guess what, they all take a lot longer to actually do and not really that much more fun or challenging or better paying and would not increase my rank any faster.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

It's also up to developers to listen to their customers if they want to maintain their standing... all games eventually lose popularity and sales income drops, and if the dev plans to develop and sell a sequel or release another game they need to have displayed that they were capable of listening to their customer base if they expect those customers to stay loyal and consider buying from them again. Since games evolve, and are not a fixed form of entertainment like a movie, the developer may well decide the initial theme and format, but they should let players determine the direction it evolves in, to a large extent.

Not really. Games who have tried that all have lost both their original supporters and those who threatened to leave. Games - especially big ones - aren't really that flexible. ED shines when it works for exactly same reasons it was designed. It looks bad when someone plays it as a race to some endgoals. It is just how it is. Threatening to leave and for game to die to get gameplay you want feels awkward at best and really toxic at worst.

There are tons of games for such people out there.

Pointless because it cost me 6-7 hours of game time and cost me 10M credits to move up just two ranks.
I say again - no fun / no sense of achievement / no reward beside the small rank increase vs a lot of time that should be 'game' time and about having fun or being entertained.

6-7 hours of game time doing fun things or being challenged in some way would be worth it - doing dull repetitive task that don't even pay well is 'pointless'.

You might say that there are some more fun missions I could have chosen to take to try and rank up - but guess what, they all take a lot longer to actually do and not really that much more fun or challenging or better paying and would not increase my rank any faster.

So you wanted it faster, grinded for it and in result found out it was not worth it.

 

[Jenner]

The professions in the game need balance. I've said it from the beginning: each career path should be roughly equal as far as credits/hour is concerned. That makes the most sense from a game design perspective in that it keeps each activity that the devs have enabled equally valid. Yes, in 'real life' there is earning disparity between various careers. Elite is not real-life.

I'll go a bit further and suggest that activities like piracy should be *very* lucrative, but come with severe downsides, too. If you are going to break bad you should rake in the dough but sacrifice a bunch of legit activities too.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

As for balance between proffesions I kinda understand FD pitch that for example trading has less challenges than combat, that's why profit there is less - because not only more players do it, but also it is cheaper in general. Problem I think with trading or combat is that profits while trading or fighting in anarchy should be way higher and it should be more dangerous. I hope this get better balanced during Beyond.

 

[danteuk]

The professions in the game need balance. I've said it from the beginning: each career path should be roughly equal as far as credits/hour is concerned. That makes the most sense from a game design perspective in that it keeps each activity that the devs have enabled equally valid. Yes, in 'real life' there is earning disparity between various careers. Elite is not real-life.

Actually they don't need to earn the same credits/hour.

For example:
Make bounties really high and good combat ships really expensive and weapons and ammo expensive
Make mining pay really low ( oh they did that already! ) but make a good mining ship and refineries etc reasonably cheap ( they are not really that expensive )

So now a bounty hunter has to pay more to earn more and a miner pays less to earn less.
So after a few months a good bounty hunter has 100M and good miner has 50M - so what?

This game is not a race to be a billionaire!
It's a sandbox that lets players 'play' and do the thing they enjoy doing.

Credits are not the end point, but are required to get where you want to be to enjoy the style of game play you want to do.
Making credits should be:

• easy ( 100k an hour )
• fun ( 1M an hour )
• challenging/rewarding ( as in a real sense of achievement ) ( 10M an hour )

Currently we have something closer to:

• quick and dull ( 100k an hour )
• slow and dull ( 1M an hour )
• combat ( 10M an hour )

 

[Ralph Vargr]

The professions in the game need balance. I've said it from the beginning: each career path should be roughly equal as far as credits/hour is concerned. That makes the most sense from a game design perspective in that it keeps each activity that the devs have enabled equally valid. Yes, in 'real life' there is earning disparity between various careers. Elite is not real-life.

I'll go a bit further and suggest that activities like piracy should be *very* lucrative, but come with severe downsides, too. If you are going to break bad you should rake in the dough but sacrifice a bunch of legit activities too.

Quite correct, and Obsidian Ant mentioned that quite clearly throughout his video.

It's just bad game-mastering on Frontier's part.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Actually they don't need to earn the same credits/hour.

For example:
Make bounties really high and good combat ships really expensive and weapons and ammo expensive
Make mining pay really low ( oh they did that already! ) but make a good mining ship and refineries etc reasonably cheap ( they are not really that expensive )

So now a bounty hunter has to pay more to earn more and a miner pays less to earn less.
So after a few months a good bounty hunter has 100M and good miner has 50M - so what?
The game is not a race to be a billionaire.
It's a sandbox that lets players 'play' and do the thing they enjoy doing.

Credits is not the end point but are required to get where you want to be to enjoy the style of game play you want to do.
Making credits should be:

• easy ( 100k an hour )
• fun ( 1M an hour )
• challenging/rewarding ( as in a real sense of achievement ) ( 10M an hour )

Currently we have something closer to:

• quick and dull ( 100k an hour )
• slow and dull ( 1M an hour )
• combat ( 10M an hour )

I was an explorer, and still am, because I enjoy it. It used to be the worst paying profession. It's gotten better, but I'm not a bounty-hunter or pirate. Not fun for me. I trade, when I find a deal. That's not very often.

 

[Riverside]

The professions in the game need balance. I've said it from the beginning: each career path should be roughly equal as far as credits/hour is concerned. That makes the most sense from a game design perspective in that it keeps each activity that the devs have enabled equally valid. Yes, in 'real life' there is earning disparity between various careers. Elite is not real-life.

I'll go a bit further and suggest that activities like piracy should be *very* lucrative, but come with severe downsides, too. If you are going to break bad you should rake in the dough but sacrifice a bunch of legit activities too.

No they don't

There can be and are activities that are profitable at the beginning but do not scale well with ship size (eg rares), there can be activities that require enormous resources and time where the rewards are more than just financial (alien stuff), and all sorts in between. PvP for example is one of the most challenging & rewarding aspects of the game, but there is virtually no monetary reward for all that practice & knowledge.

In 1.0 the way to make money was by A-B trading. Exploration was for the adventure, and pew pew was to add risk and/or for fun. All three progressed their respective Elite ranks & progressing that rank was the main motivation. I'd be happy to see a return to those values, although I'll concede I'm probably in a minority now.

 

[MarcusBritish]

Not really.

Not really? And what planet do you live on... because your argument lacks real-world business sense.

Let's imagine a developer generates 1 million sales of its base game, and plans to release expansions, or DLCs, plus has a store front with addons for their game... but a majority of those 1M customers decide the core game is lacking, boring, doesn't meet up to its potential... they offer suggestions and ideas... the dev ignores all those ideas and continues making the game, but it remains just as boring for the most part... they result in driving off 1/2 their customer base. That's 1/2 a million potential customers of their expansions/DLCs gone, just like that... it is also 1/2 a million potentially negative reviews, because it's well known that people are more likely to leave reviews of a bad experience than a good one, for any legit product or service you can name. In essense, by refusing to bend they kill their own game... that leads to less and less development, customer fall-off continues, and the game soon dies an unhappy death.

Threatening to leave and for game to die to get gameplay you want feels awkward at best and really toxic at worst.

Worked for No Man's Land though, didn't it. Huge outrage... tons of negative reactions... investigations by consumer rights groups... many demands for refunds... and the devs there turned themselves around. Toxic? Toxic is giving two-fingers to people that pay for something that shows promise but is highly over-rated and showing no signs of improvement in key areas after years of development and input from the customers that is largely ignored.

You're making up excuses... poor excuses at that... for bad business ethics and/or weak developer commitment to customer feedback. I'm not saying FD is guilty of all of these things, but there are so many examples of what is "bad" about ED and FD's lack of response to the negative consensus, on blogs and vids and reviews... that your defence of ED is laughable, because it's gradually falling into the minority camp. 2.4 sounded big and exciting, but really... was it? How far can you push you defence before you realise that you're not part of the solution, but are actually supporting the problems of the core game?

 

[Jenner]

PvP for example is one of the most challenging & rewarding aspects of the game, but there is virtually no monetary reward for all that practice & knowledge.

That right there is the crux of the issue, and the reason why I stand by my statement.

PvPers (or insert any other profession) should not be forced into doing things they do not like only because they need cash to enable them to do things they *do* enjoy.

If I want to PvP I should be able to make that my career. Why should I have to haul goods around or do the latest CG just to afford to outfit my PvP ship?

Money enables you to do what you want in the game, but certain activities pay more than others. That means that if you find an activity enjoyable is not one of those that pays well you're either A)Exponentially increasing your grind time to enable your preferred play style or B)Having to temporarily do a career that you don't like just to earn $$$.

 

[SpaceScania]

ObsidianAnt raised some excellent points in this video and I agree with him. Elite does force you to do boring and repetitive tasks for a long time in order to unlock large parts of the game. For me the worst offender is the Navy Rank grind I don't mind certain goals taking a long time, but there should be more enjoyable and variable ways to achieve these goals. A great way to do this is to make different activities rewarding, not just passenger sight seeing missions. Mining, Salvage, Bulk Trading, Haulage, Transport, and Sight Seeing should all be viable ways to advance in the game.

The problem for many of us is that we have limited time to play the game. So in order to achieve the goals we are compelled to look for the most efficient way to earn income or navy rank or whatever, even if doing other things in the game are more fun. What I think people are looking for and what ObsidianAnt is referencing is that we should be able to have more interesting and varied ways to advance.

Using the Imperial Navy rank grind I feel is a great example. I am working towards getting the Imperial Cutter (I'm a Count currently). I am fine with the fact that pursuing this would take a long time. The amount of game hours I need to get this bird isn't the problem for me and I suspect for a lot of people. The problem is that the grind just isn't fun. What I wish is that mining and exploration and salvage and other gameplay components like these could be part of the mix in progressing my rep with the Imperial Navy. Donation missions, shuttling VIP's and haulage back and forth between the same ports I worked up to being allied becomes dull very quickly. I take breaks to do other fun things in the game, but if I want to get my Cutter one day I have to put in a lot of time grinding these repetitive and boring tasks. There should be a better and more fun way even if it takes a considerable period of time.

ObsidianAnt's core argument that different styles of play need to be more rewarding I think really resonate with a lot of people. This doesn't have to mean instant gratification, but it should mean that I am not compelled to play in one narrow repetitive way just to move ahead.