Opinion: Why Pirating pay may not need buffed.

[msyblade]

I read a post earlier about how Pirate stories are among the most interesting, varied, and fun stories to read about the elite universe. I'm referring to players telling a story of what happened to them last night, not literature, or authored stories.

Point being, I agree. Capt. 'Murica started a thread today about a confrontation that caused him to regret his actions after the fact, while during said encounter, he was literally just doing it, how it is supposed to be done. I really understand this, and was very interested in the entire thread. It's just an interesting moral dilemma, and the fact that he faced it, and it affected his psyche outside of the game world, is something I have never encountered BH'ing (my primary occupation), exploring, OR trading.

I am standing around 35$ million in assets, which puts me firmly in the "Need significantly more grinding to progress to any ship above vulture/T7" tier. This means I do not have the luxury of romanticizing piracy, and deciding "Screw it, I wanna be a pirate, and live an INTERESTING life!" (Parallels to the 1700's anyone?) I would be stuck where I am financially until I got over the romance and decided to progress. This is a good thing.

If Piracy was as lucrative, financially, as BHing (The 3rd bounty I cashed in, was no different "excitement-wise" than the 1000th, or any in between. After a few dozen, it becomes "fish in a barrel" for the rest of your career. This becomes monotonous and mundane, but is rewarding due to long term (read: grinding) progress made. Perhaps this is a negative argument, but I'm going to try to elaborate on why it may be a necessary evil.

My argument is, that if piracy paid well, and many times creates an interesting, or heart pounding experience, why would ANY of us do ANYTHING else? We all know that hours of mining is mind numbingly boring (Drones will increase efficiency and profit to tolerable levels,but it will not kill the monotony after doing it for days on end, it will not add "excitement" or adrenaline to the equation).

Follow me here, I'm rambling and you're doing great!

It's the same with Exploring, or Trading for a living. (See that line was easy on the brain, I'm getting better!)

Disclaimer: This rant is Vodka induced, I figure this is a better chance of being productive with my thoughts than hopping in my ship right now. Call it a "hunch", or "absolute fact", depending on how well you know me. (Am I the only one that shoots myself in the foot every time I drink and play in an unforgiving galaxy? I'm betting not.)

Okay, back to the point.
This is a parallel to real life. Trading is WORK. Piracy is Partying with friends. In my extensive life experience, partying just does not pay well, but it is FUN. And I'm going to do it, sometimes, to let off steam, between the monotony of work, because I need to. It helps make working bearable, in the long haul. Let off some steam, right?

(Wrapping it up, I promise)
What if "Partying" paid as much as "Working"? what would this universe be like? I'm fairly certain "Career" pirates would argue that the profession has no merits, until there is a "buff" to make it worthwhile.

My favorite analogy of this process:

Pirate: I'm taking ownership of your current assets, good sir.
Trader: Ummm, NO you are not, I worked hard for these, and I'm going to put up a FIGHT.
Pirate: Really? I mean. . .We CAN do it your way but....(trader is a human, he has pride, right? Like me and you.)
Trader: Fine, what do you want, perhaps I can get out of here with a minimal loss.
Pirate: No. You can't. You're going to FILL my entire cargo hold with YOUR treasure.
Trader: Your ENTIRE cargo hold?!
Pirate: That's right! SIX TONS. Hurry.

I truly think this may be the center of many complaints about this galaxy I love so much.
"But the GRIND, tho!"
"But the empty sandbox, tho!"

Look guys, the grind is YOUR choice, not mine (PS. It's mine too). but there IS another avenue, no grind, just excitement and EXTREME interaction, without profit. Unfortunately the payoff is not monetary, but self serving adrenaline. What if it was both, profitable AND exciting. Trading would die, BHing would live and get old, and the crazy loner explorers that are gone for months at a time, would still be out of the loop (not that it is a bad thing. TRUE explorers do not realize it, but they hold a deep reverance in this community, it DOES take something special, and we all know it. Explorers will break this game open, not Bounty hunters or traders, most of know this deep down, we just aren't patient enough to do it ourselves.)

So, if excitement is what you seek, DO IT. Stop working and party all day darnit. No, you will not grind to the next "Tier" of success.
You'll have a fun and interesting career instead. That's a fair trade, I deal with it every morning when my alarm goes off because it is time to go to work.

Double P.S. When I wake up tomorrow, sober, I'm likely to edit this. If you found it tonight, I hope it makes sense in the long term. I think that this line of consideration may lead to the actual problem of why half of people ever born LOVE this game to the core, and the other half want to drop a bomb on Siberia, because it angers them so much. Somewhere in this rambling is a happy medium, I'm trying to find.

All comments and opinions welcome, I really want to hear if I "struck a chord".

 

[CMDR Ashylnn D'Elyse]

Makes sense to me.
Sure pirating could use a small buff just to make things more interesting. Maybe just a small boost in profit for bringing plundered goods to a station and not an outpost?

 

[msyblade]

Something like that . Absolutely the right track. A motivation, of some sort. Right now,there isn't one, honestly. But, they need to be careful that the motivation/balance they choose, does not tip the scale.

 

[Agarthan]

It needs to be a viable option for players to take missions for pirate factions as a way to progress financially or the current structure is likely to wipe them all out. I think that's what appears to be the issue is anyway, I don't think robbing individual users was ever meant to be that profitable, but may be sales of illegal goods on the black market does need a buff. When you see a bunch of illegal cargo floating around, as a BH, and you think if I pick up that cargo and I get scanned it's going to cost me almost the entire value of that cargo before I even sell it, there's a problem with that.

 

[msyblade]

^^^ Getting closer to the crux of the problem! And repped! Recent threads express a dire loss of interest due to anarchy systems falling easily, due to current mechanics. But Anarchy systems are one of the basis of interesting interaction in the galaxy. Perhaps need to buff THOSE.

This is what I need, conversation. There IS a problem, we just cannot identify it yet, keep em coming!

 

[Quineloe]

(Parallels to the 1700's anyone?)

Nope, zero, nada, zilch. No one became a pirate because he was bored. Your concepts of real piracy are incredibly romanticized, the life of a pirate is/was never a life of partying.

Piracy can't be a top paying profession, because the game can only take so many pirates before it becomes utterly pointless for traders to trade in open play, then you'll run out of targets, and your piracy once again is terrible.

Piracy however already is paying somewhat well. There are a few pirates who made far more money than you did through pure piracy. Trade rank mostly harmless, combat rank aimless, assets 50 million. And that was with 50% black market prices.

Now that black market prices have been buffed by 50%, I don't see how you can still complain. You're selling cargo you did not pay for, after all.
Miners generally consider a scoop worth 1000 credits worth doing. You scoop 10k on Palladium and still think its too low? O,o

The big problem with piracy in my opinion is that it can only be done in very expensive ships. The current masslock mechanics prevent you from pirating Type 6 and up against players who know the game in a Cobra, Viper, and so on. IMO, all combat ships should be viable for piracy, not just those 20m and up.

An Eagle with a downsized shield, a class 1 interdictor and a cargo scanner would be a perfect pirate vessel - easy to kill, cheap to replace
http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=60L,5QG5QG5QG3RO,2-3c5K5K2C3I3m3c,05U7O29pC

19k rebuy. 8t of cargo means if you steal a load of gold you get almost 60k for that, enough to die three times. Gimballed weapons because you may need to shoot out cargo hatches

I'd rather see more of these flying around than fully A-geared Clippers and Pythons hobby pirates.

 

[msyblade]

Nope, zero, nada, zilch. No one became a pirate because he was bored. Your concepts of real piracy are incredibly romanticized, the life of a pirate is/was never a life of partying.

Piracy can't be a top paying profession, because the game can only take so many pirates before it becomes utterly pointless for traders to trade in open play, then you'll run out of targets, and your piracy once again is terrible.

Piracy however already is paying somewhat well. There are a few pirates who made far more money than you did through pure piracy. Trade rank mostly harmless, combat rank aimless, assets 50 million. And that was with 50% black market prices.

Now that black market prices have been buffed by 50%, I don't see how you can still complain. You're selling cargo you did not pay for, after all.
Miners generally consider a scoop worth 1000 credits worth doing. You scoop 10k on Palladium and still think its too low? O,o

The big problem with piracy in my opinion is that it can only be done in very expensive ships. The current masslock mechanics prevent you from pirating Type 6 and up against players who know the game in a Cobra, Viper, and so on. IMO, all combat ships should be viable for piracy, not just those 20m and up.

An Eagle with a downsized shield, a class 1 interdictor and a cargo scanner would be a perfect pirate vessel - easy to kill, cheap to replace
http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=60L,5QG5QG5QG3RO,2-3c5K5K2C3I3m3c,05U7O29pC

19k rebuy. 8t of cargo means if you steal a load of gold you get almost 60k for that, enough to die three times. Gimballed weapons because you may need to shoot out cargo hatches

I'd rather see more of these flying around than fully A-geared Clippers and Pythons hobby pirates.

If 60k is an adequate reward for an hours work, I must ask, What do you do for a living?? (Elite sense) How have you prospered? Do you? (prosper)? BTW, never pirated, I'm a BH, always have been. I just like the heart pounding emotion of pirate stories of last night. I don't find "AMAZING BH stories of last night." I'm guessing you have some? (Cool BH stories, in the elite galaxy, that you can share?)

 

[Quineloe]

If 60k is an adequate reward for an hours work, I must ask, What do you do for a living?? (Elite sense)

Last thing I did was Diso CG and I earned around 12.5 million credits in 90 minutes. Why?

 

[Agarthan]

If 60k is an adequate reward for an hours work, I must ask, What do you do for a living?? (Elite sense) How have you prospered? Do you? (prosper)? BTW, never pirated, I'm a BH, always have been. I just like the heart pounding emotion of pirate stories of last night. I don't find "AMAZING BH stories of last night." I'm guessing you have some? (Cool BH stories, in the elite galaxy, that you can share?)

I'm a noob I've only had the game for a little over a month, probably have a hundred hours or so in, Don't know if there is a way to tell, but I have 15+ million credits earned, 95% of that has been from bounty hunting. All you have to do is find a busy RES that has class 7 or higher pirate ships coming in and just join in with the system security for easy money. Even in something like an upgraded adder you can easily leverage a million credits an hour doing this.

 

[msyblade]

So how, in the milky way, is 60k, adequate compensation for the troubles of going awry of the law? 12.5 MILLION vs 60k? Please elaborate, this is the part I cannot put together.


PS. Agarthan, that is also how I make a living. Not pirating, no profit in it. Never even TRIED it. Always been a BH, for obvious financial reasons.

 

[Troa Barton]

Well all of the professions need work, so first let's say they have a lot of room to make piracy a more lucrative profession.
even if they make the profession more lucrative there is always going to be variables and a story to tell.
each player will react differently to being pirated.
each trader is going to be hauling different goods.
there are several different ships used in trading.
some of those ships are armed or in a wing.
even if it becames a "fish in a barrel" situation trading is never going to be that diverse in what you experience.

the way I see trading and piracy becoming both less dull and more profitable is the fleshing out of the smuggling play style.
the black market would need to become a real market where you could both buy and sell items.
the buy in for these items would have to be very high. This is where the less dull aspect comes into play for the trader and the potential profit for the pirate.
Think of it like a late game rare item market without an item limit other than your bank account.
again the buy in needs to be high so you could gamble the load and incentivize running with stronger shields, heavier equipment, weapons, armor ect. The consequences of getting pirated, scanned, or destroyed need to be high but so then would the profits.

following that you need an incentive to play in open, this is all great but the Pirates won't have any targets if their prey plays in solo.
there needs to be more effective tools for pirates to practice non lethal piracy.
the reason why this is important is because traders have fun running from pirates in the stories you hear on the forums so if they can run without getting blown up there's incentive number one. the other would be the obvious, lower fear of being destroyed.
you could make this an open mode only thing but that probably wouldn't go over well.

its an everybody wins situation. An option for risk and less than legal activities while not being a pirate with more profits to show for it.
more players trading even in the late game which is good news for pirates.
more profit for the pirates because the goods they would steal would be worth far more.
it would also help diversify pirate hunting grounds so that there are more places to hunt which would also make it easier for newer players to trade rares instead of flying right into the pirates den. Which would encourage them to play in and stay in open.
this would also provide a risk and reward money sync which is something many people heartily defend in the "I flew without insurance and died threads" the "don't fly without insurance, this is elite DANGEROUS" crowd.
The thrill of flying unshielded in a type 9 in open is what keeps me trading. throw a little gambling and a reason to upgrade the rest of the ship and you have yourself a fun way to play.
make the pirate game a bit more rewarding when you catch yourself a smuggler instead of a trader and have a better equipped target to deal with without blowing up the piggy bank and the game improves for both predator and prey.

 

[msyblade]

Ohhh, SO repped. And thank you for your insight. (NOT sarcastic guys. A real opinion, thought out, and well spoken). For, or against, I don't care. Just a conversation instead of hyperbole.

 

[Apos]

It is getting buffed though, just not directly.

Drones mean less scooping and more intersecting.

 

[Agarthan]

snip.

Those are all great ideas and integrate with a more buffed black market.

Some other outfitting items that would make this awesome.

Stealth plating, which would be essentially like a perma silent running, but leaves you vulnerable to lasers and projectiles

signal jammer, which works only temporarily preventing the reporting of crimes

emp, same thing, may be only lasts about 5 or 10 seconds, doesn't hit shields or anything else, just navigation, controls, com (same as jammer), may be it can be targeted at 1 system for 100% chance of success or a general fire which has a percentage chance of taking out those particular systems stated above.

Also, make the cargo scoop into a module and create upgrades like a teleporter.

 

[Ydiss]

Why would anyone do anything else?

Because they want to?

This argument got thrown out every time we asked for bounty hunting to be buffed. It got buffed. Not everyone is a bounty hunter.

This is the reason some of us would like some career choices improved:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=2m30s&v=6gMbLjUjs1w&feature=youtu.be

It's been confirmed by the developers that several elements of the game are bare bones (understandable). Mining is next in line for its buff. Bounty hunting had its buff.

There really isn't any valid argument to keep piracy exactly as it is.

 

[Troa Barton]

Those are all great ideas and integrate with a more buffed black market.

Some other outfitting items that would make this awesome.

Stealth plating, which would be essentially like a perma silent running, but leaves you vulnerable to lasers and projectiles

signal jammer, which works only temporarily preventing the reporting of crimes

emp, same thing, may be only lasts about 5 or 10 seconds, doesn't hit shields or anything else, just navigation, controls, com (same as jammer), may be it can be targeted at 1 system for 100% chance of success or a general fire which has a percentage chance of taking out those particular systems stated above.

Also, make the cargo scoop into a module and create upgrades like a teleporter.

Oh the possibilities are endless with a system like that in place.
Pirate outposts similar to the high tech systems sought after by blue collar traders.
harpoons
nav blockers that would place an escape vector before you could jump out into supercruise instead of just jumping to another system.
mass inhibitors
smuggler racks that would have a chance to block incoming cargo scans at the cost of cargo space.
manifest erasers turning stolen cargo into abandoned cargo.
stealth drives that would lower your supercruise signature at the cost of jump range.
a whole new game opens up after that.

 

[Quineloe]

So how, in the milky way, is 60k, adequate compensation for the troubles of going awry of the law? 12.5 MILLION vs 60k? Please elaborate, this is the part I cannot put together.


PS. Agarthan, that is also how I make a living. Not pirating, no profit in it. Never even TRIED it. Always been a BH, for obvious financial reasons.

The part where you completely screwed up was where you thought I said 60k for an hour of work, which I never did.

60k for one successful piracy encounter is what I said, which is considerably less than an hour.


The other part is where you missed I am flying a fully decked Anaconda, while comparing _that_ for god knows what reason to a 400k starter ship. Of course I'll make more money. But if you're a beginner in a moderately fitted Eagle, is 60k really that little money?

 

[Agarthan]

Why would anyone do anything else?

Because they want to?

This argument got thrown out every time we asked for bounty hunting to be buffed. It got buffed. Not everyone is a bounty hunter.

This is the reason some of us would like some career choices improved:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=2m30s&v=6gMbLjUjs1w&feature=youtu.be

It's been confirmed by the developers that several elements of the game are bare bones (understandable). Mining is next in line for its buff. Bounty hunting had its buff.

There really isn't any valid argument to keep piracy exactly as it is.

According to their own words this balancing needs to happen. I'm not even a pirate and this makes sense to me.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh the possibilities are endless with a system like that in place.
Pirate outposts similar to the high tech systems sought after by blue collar traders.
harpoons
nav blockers that would place an escape vector before you could jump out into supercruise instead of just jumping to another system.
mass inhibitors
smuggler racks that would have a chance to block incoming cargo scans at the cost of cargo space.
manifest erasers turning stolen cargo into abandoned cargo.
stealth drives that would lower your supercruise signature at the cost of jump range.
a whole new game opens up after that.

Oh I really like the ideas too.

 

[Quineloe]

Why would anyone do anything else?

Because they want to?

This argument got thrown out every time we asked for bounty hunting to be buffed. It got buffed. Not everyone is a bounty hunter.

This is the reason some of us would like some career choices improved:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=2m30s&v=6gMbLjUjs1w&feature=youtu.be

It's been confirmed by the developers that several elements of the game are bare bones (understandable). Mining is next in line for its buff. Bounty hunting had its buff.

There really isn't any valid argument to keep piracy exactly as it is.

I honestly think bounty farming is a bandaid fix and it needs to be redesigned from scrap. Sitting in a RES with a dozen police ships, waiting for stupid pirates to suicide themselves into you is about as deep as a rain puddle.

Bounty hunting should be about *hunting*, not farming. Currently bounty hunting is the equivalent of wanted murderers walking to their own execution on their own free will.

Scooper drones also won't "fix" mining by themselves.

 

[Agarthan]

I honestly think bounty farming is a bandaid fix and it needs to be redesigned from scrap. Sitting in a RES with a dozen police ships, waiting for stupid pirates to suicide themselves into you is about as deep as a rain puddle.

Bounty hunting should be about *hunting*, not farming. Currently bounty hunting is the equivalent of wanted murderers walking to their own execution on their own free will.

Scooper drones also won't "fix" mining by themselves.

I don't think they should completely scrap the RES scenarios, but the problem may be that the AI's in general need more depth. Pirates are notably slippery and will almost always run from a fight rather than stand their ground as it doesn't benefit them to fight it out over some pseudo sense of honor. They should be looking for RES's with less security and you should be running into scenarios where if you don't have wing man you have to hunt the hunters and wait for them to engage their prey otherwise you will be facing 2 or 3 on 1 yourself. They should be trying to run at the first sign of serious trouble, may be they have a chance to FJ to another system or just SC that way bounty hunters who don't have a wake scanner can still chase them. This brings up another topic that I've personally noticed, the wake scanner is basically useless, every time I've chased a pirate to another system they are never there, may be I'm using it wrong but it makes no sense.