Reptuation Missions

[Atebits]

I've complained about these things from the very first time I played the game, but after 800 hours of playing I feel more confident I know how to voice things before I just have said in anger.

"Why have Reputation if you're not going to provide a way to raise it?"


Let's break this down:

1. The missions boards pay out in 25,000 credits to 100,000 credits in MOST situations.
2. There is a persistent rumor you'll be nerfing smuggling and long distance trading to make sure of this.
3. You nerfed donation missions into the ground and then raised the prices on them: just for the Empire.
4. You did this after a year meaning everyone in 2015 who joined your game got to pay around about 12,000,000 to 20,000,000 credits for Rep and then the grind was over.
5. Today we have to go to HIP 10716 and WU GUINAGI for Imperial rep gain
6. It's frequently the case that if you get just 3 or so missions paying 25,000 cr from the sytems of HIP 10716 and WU GUINAGI whose rep gain may total to a 1% or so at best later.

1. + 2. = really knocking down your player base
3. + 1. + 2. = really knocking down your future player base: can't get rep, can't get the money required for the ships the rep goes toward buying... can't play your game because you designed it in such a way it can't be won. <--- This is stupid and it seems to be your goal
4. = sending a clear message you really don't care this is a giant waste of our time
5. = would be fine if you either shortened the way this works or paid out more rep for longer distance flights
- This particular section goes into the wider problem of the mission system as a whole. Basically, at 800 hours of game time I should HAVE this already just be having done missions all over the place. But, because of the way rep is given it's like I never played the game. What's so bloody vital about the HIP 10716 and WU GUINAGI systems that they provide all this rep? Nothing. It's just they're the only systems that you can rely upon to get it.
- As someone who spent MONTHS as Squire at 21% because nothing was giving rep I'm more than a little sensitive to how bad missions are and then how bad they are where it relates to rep
6. Again, after nerfing Imperial rep gain into oblivion you go one step further and don't provide enough missions to make a meaningful step forwards with it in a human lifetime unless you log out of the game and try to see if one provide just one more mission... Except the fat woman of course... she provides: Nobles of HIP 10716. The problem with her? She doesn't provide any rep at all... and she's the only one giving missions!

At the end of the day I'm not sure what you were aiming for in making things like this, but the ultimate result is kind of appalling. I get it. You've proven you're a good active developer, but this just keeps dragging on. Fix it already.

Ways this could be fixed:
a. Instead of asking us to donate money (our time) to doing missions (our time again) how about rewarding us for playing you game instead of the steady stream of punishment? Are you that contemptuous we want a clipper/cutter? That's how this comes across. The apathy really builds up in short order.
b. You have a real fetish for monotonous gameplay. Instead of having us go to 1 system and stay there provide a "chained mission". No, NOT those stupid things where we only get credits if we do A, B, C, D, E, F... ZZ, ZZZ, etc where every letter is a station. No, these would be things like, "You fly to station A. Upon turning your mission in a new mission is triggered which raises the overall rep and reward. IMPORANT: You can stop or keep going right here. There's just more money and rep ahead if you keep going." The very important thing to take away from this is that you'd be CHANGING LOCATIONS! It breaks up the monotony so long as the reward is significant enough.

As a person who has grinded 500,000,000 credits from 700,000 credits a turn-in Trading... I'm dead sick of the monotony in the game. Just move us around a bit and stop nerfing things. There wasn't that much to play to begin with.


The rep gain could be small, but significant. IT HAS TO BE PRACTICAL. No more of this 6 months stuck as SQUIRE because everyone NPC is like this troglodyte Noble of HIP 10716 who has ALL KINDS of... USELESS missions. The monetary gain just needs to go up. I LOVE hauling... but your missions pay out nothing. Which again, goes back to. "Why do you have these things and make us do them if they aim to waste our time?" You're just turning people off to the entire game because most of where they'll first find money is missions and the missions so very rarely ever pay out. The most useful advice I ever got about this game was: "STOP DOING MISSIONS!"


c. Stop making things that provide no reward and can actually cause us to lose money (especially when we're effectively HALTING ALL OTHER GAMEPLAY TO PARTICIPATE IN YOUR REPETITIVE MINI-QUEST).


And again, because I'm starting to like FD I'll repeat this... I like this game and I have faith in FD, but I see this stuff a lot in MMO. It's a bad disrespectful tactic to push on people. It just makes them hate you. Yes, hate you. That's not a dramatization. If you really don't want us to play your game, keep making stuff like this.

 

[Lestat]

You ever ask other players onf the forum how they gain rep? How long it took? Maybe they are doing something better then what you are doing. I not saying your wrong or right. I just asking. For my self I really don't care about rep. But making my own story come alive. One life One ship The Iron man mode.

 

[Atebits]

You ever ask other players onf the forum how they gain rep? How long it took? Maybe they are doing something better then what you are doing. I not saying your wrong or right. I just asking. For my self I really don't care about rep. But making my own story come alive. One life One ship The Iron man mode.

Ya, everyone seems to lead back to just those systems unfortunately. I thought maybe I could use Inara to plan a Trade Route or something so I could keep gaining rep AND money, but for now I'm letting it go. A Cutter is 1 billion credits A-rated. You don't NEED A-rated, but I don't see the point in throwing away my time into something that pays me 25,000 credits a mission so I can get something that is going to cost me 1,041,000,000 credits all told.

It just says FD didn't think this one through.

 

[PanTast]

I did 3 ranks to Baron in the Dvorsi area in 5 days. Roughly 35 hrs of playing time.

Then I did 5 ranks to Duke at HIP 10716 - Wu Guinagi in 5 days. Estimated 32 hrs.

I earned in total around 230 mil cr. I did donation missions worth 40 mil cr estimated. But I concentrated on Boom Data missions worth at least 90.000 cr. I stacked them by using mode swap. So most of the times I was in the missions screen.

From my point of view there is no need to change the rank progression. The commanders just need to learn to be patient. Once you are allied with the imperial factions you get very high paying missions. That way you get the money to take the more expensive donation missions.

From what I´ve witnessed the expensive donations get you around 0.4 percent even at Marquis.

I think FD has a pretty well thought through idea how this system should work. And you benefit from your reputation at these factions later on: everytime I seek for hard to get materials or commodities, I return to Dvorsi or HIP 10716/Wu Guinagi an pick up some missions to get the nice stuff (Cracked Industrial Firmware, Pharmaceutical Isolators and so on)

With a bit of dedication this game is a pleasure to play.

o7

 

[Valo56]

So most of the times I was in the missions screen.

This pretty much sums up everything wrong with the current system. "Most of the time I was in the missions screen." When you want to do missions (for rep or otherwise), you want to go on some sort of an ADVENTURE and feel like you're actually accomplishing something on behalf of an organization, not fight with how long it takes to load up a list of missions, or spend your time swapping between Open and Solo.

This kind of "gameplay" isn't gameplay at all, it's just annoying. A grind is fine, people spending the bulk of their time refreshing the mission screen is not.

 

[PanTast]

Well, Sir, you are not forced to do so. The whole process will just take about 50% longer. To be precise: I really don´t know if it will take that longer.

And if you´ve got all 20 missions collected and deliver them to the target stations, there is a big possibility to keep the mission number always near the 20´s. I was just a bit unpatient, but I wanted the Cutter desperately.

On the other hand I avoided (nearly) all donation missions above 500.000Cr. And after all that, I had tons of rare materials and commodities.


AND you can interprete the process of mode switching quite immersive. Going to the counter to pick up the mission that are available. Going to a bar having a drink to return to the mission office to pick up more until your cargo hold and mission harddrive is full. Just like a dispatcher

I would definitely don´t say that there is something wrong with the current system. I bet there would be many complaints if mode switching would be made impossible. We all have to take the game how it is. If you want to change the way a game works, you need to pick a game that is easy to mod and change it to your taste. I doubt that many complainers are able to do so.

o7

 

[lecorsobreton]

I have spent a lot of time in Diaguandri (I play solo and I don't switch modes) and now, I get skimmer missions (kill x skimmers in lalande 5761 for example) and most of them are paying at least 1.5 millions, up to 3 millions and you can do them in 20 minutes. Since I'm well respected with most factions in Ray Gateway (I don't know how I did it, it must have been all the bounty hunting and CZ fighting I guess), I can select a lot of missions without mode switching. I usually select 5 or 6 missions, so I can complete them in one session.

Today, I earned 7.3m in 1h30. It was an assortment of missions: 4 skimmer missions (2 worth 2.3m, the other two worth 1m combined, I'm still low with that faction), 1 black box retrieval and 1 trade data retrieval. Maybe half of these missions were for the Federation and I managed to get from midship man 77% to midship man 92%.

I used to mine and go after bounties a lot, but the game started to feel stale. Now I feel like I'm part of the day-to-day life of the station and factions. I even like the snarky comments I receive in the mission board "oh back already, I was getting used to not having you there".

TLDR; spend some time in a system, make a name for yourself by bounty hunting or CZ fighting and you won't need to switch modes with the juicy missions you'll get

 

[DocLooshkin]

Hello, Atebits.

My thoughts...

I'll be honest, I had to read the entire thread through twice to understand what the actual complaint was. I don't want to be the kind of poster who sits here and says "you're playing it wrong", but Atebits, it honestly seems to me that you actually are playing it wrong.

No-one is supposed to just grind away at missions (or whatever) until they have half a billion credits. No-one is supposed to just grind rep, or Engineer mods, or anything else. No-one is supposed to be mode-switching at all.

Progress in ED - on any given line of progress - is something that's supposed to happen as a consequence of play, but it's not meant to be the sole focus of a player's experience.

You're supposed to be exploring different things and enjoying the game. If that's not happening now, then I don't really see how a Cutter's going to change that. It's not as if a bigger or better ship is going to magically make any given activity any more enjoyable than it is at present. Easier, yes, in some cases. More fun...? Not really, no - that's not the point. It's a sandbox. The game you make for yourself is entirely the point.

Elite: Dangerous is exactly as grindy as you choose it to be.
You and you alone, no more and no less.

Blaze the trail that makes you happy, Atebits - not the trail that bores you to tears.

 

[Atebits]

Sorry all, I lost this post somewhere. Real life got hectic and I had to figure out where my subscriptions went. (Yes, I'm absolutely horrible at using forums).

Thanks so much for the help. A lot of stations and ways of doing this mentioned that weren't known to me before.


@ DocLooshkin,
I want to say clearly and honestly I'm not calling you out. Generally wherever you speak on the forum I always nod and try to remember all the details. You're usually 100% on true.

I'm only replying directly because the "you're playing it wrong" comment.
From playing way too many MMOs part of my mind is 100% insane with paranoia. I could 'edit' this part of my mind into something more sane and rational, but to do so I find entirely insane and irrational. Let me explain...

Element A:
If it is bad it will get worse.
Element B:
Games demand we keep upgrading to be 'best' stuff... which there will always be more of...
Element C:
The 'best stuff' always requires 'stuff' (assets) plus (money) multiplied by time n! ^n!
Element D:
If you are lacking in any one of these you'll end up so time-gated out of the game you have to quit or surrender your life to the game to catch up.


Since I've mostly been Exploring/Trading up until now I have to catch up NOW. 3 weeks until the next semester. By doing this I have failed to meet the conditions of: C, B, and staving off D resulting in A multiplied by n!^n!

Element E:
All online MMOs require that you maintain the economic footing of the previous expansion such that your money is equal to the cost of the best present armor/weapons of the game multiplied by 3.
- Since Elite's ships are ladder such that to go to ship B from A you need the the Cost of A at A-rating multiplied by 2 + 1 (original cost at a-rating again) for insurance this is the same system.
- Same game type economically
1.0 set this conditions to be met as entirely straight forwards... A-Rated Conda/Type-9 + Cutter/Corvette.
2.0 is now on and changes are coming
- here we refer to Element A
- I haven't met the conditions of the economics set out by 1.0 which means that in 2.0 the game will add Time-Gating mechanics comparable to those of the the nerf that hit Reputation for 2016 players. Remember Element A? Small Grind become GIGANTIC GRIND... and now with 2.2 they are even dding in Ships we have to pay for to grind in. ... No. I'm not playing it wrong. I'm trying to save the game for me before the developers make the grind so gigantic it will make me hate this game with a burning passion such that I never pick it up again.
- Since I haven't encountered too much of a struggle with money even just Trading (though it never peaks about 700,000 credits) I can assume that money is going to get nerfed soon and a longer track added to make "gaming" a "grind": ala, Engineers as they originally came out


Add all this together?
I need to save up:
a. The cost of 1 A-rated cutter
b. The cost of 1 A-rated Orca or Beluga
c. The cost of a. and b. + that much again.

Won't happen.
I CAN save for the cost of a. and maybe .b

Otherwise? Game over.
- That's just how online games work. That's how they always work.

 

[goemon]

i'm confused.

are you talking about reputation?

or rank?

for the credits part: ED got some massive up of profits in 2.1. introducing economic state depending trading.

for everything below t6 you got rare systems in boom. from a t6 on you can earn 300000-400000 cr (3500-3800 cr/t) ONE WAY trading medicines to war systems ... so you are looking at 2-4 mio per hour doing trade runs. 5-10 hours in a t6 own you a t7, total profit scales with cargo size, so then you are doing 4-8 mio per hour ... 10 hours later you have a t9, and have 7-16 mio per hour ... 10 hours later ... you get the idea.

reputation can be gained by trade profits, too - the numbers for a non-superpower-aligned minor faction are ~2 mio profit to get cordial, ~4 mio profit to get friendly, and ~8 mio profit to get allied.

even if FD would stop any longrange missions (i doubt it) - they also introduced other ways to earn serious money ... not even talking about missions here.

for navy rank - you are right. it is very hard to gain ranks in a "normal way". on my main account it took me 9 month to get rank for a cutter. my secobd account lives without rabk locked ships for that reason. but CR aren't a problem.

 

[DocLooshkin]

[...] That's just how online games work. That's how they always work.

Hmmm... I fear you might be right, Atebits, but I hope you're wrong.

In all honesty, my experience of online gaming is largely limited to ED. While I've been an enthusiastic gamer since the very early eighties, I'm just not keen on online gaming as a hobby. While there do seem to be a few civilised corners in the MMO world, it seems to me that it's mostly full of belligerent American teenagers, typically texting and shouting racist, sexist and homophobic abuse at each other. As a culture, I don't find it appealing at all and so I've stayed away.

This means I come to ED unencumbered by certain prejudgments, but it also means my knowledge of the mechanics generally employed in MMOs is extremely limited. Your assessment of how such things usually play out is undoubtedly better-informed than mine.

That said, this is ED, created by FD and Mr Braben. They're on record as saying they don't want ED to be just another MMO and it's always been noted - at least here in the forums - that ED is not an MMORPG.

That position seems supported by FD's apparent unwillingness to implement full player-trade - and very strongly supported by their outright, explicit refusal to implement guilds, even in the face of what seems like high demand from PvP fans.

If FD means to stick to their guns, then the industrial normative you describe - this bizarre Zeno's paradox of endlessly spiralling grind - seems like something FD would do better to avoid, rather than follow. I would imagine nobody actually wants such an endlessly receding goalpost - it sounds at least as painfully stultifying as the guild systems they've promised to avoid.

I can see the absolute necessity to adjust a game's currency while it's in its earlier stages - it's value lies in the work players are prepared to put in to get it, rather than anything FD can predict or set in advance - but once one of the game's currencies (be it rep or credits or anything else) is balanced to an acceptible standard, it should generally stay that way, within reason*.

* Economic catastrophes caused by galactic events - such as wars, alien invasions, bankrupt major factions, etc - seem like a reasonable thing, providing they aren't just used as a cheap inflationary backdoor. I want events in ED to matter more than that - as does FD, I presume.

While progress in a game should always be contingent on work, FD are very clever people: I'm sure they can find ways of exacting more work from players without having to endlessly - and repeatedly - nerf the value out of the games existing currencies, if they want to. I'm hopeful. Let's see what happens.

 

[Atebits]

i'm confused.

are you talking about reputation?

or rank?

for the credits part: ED got some massive up of profits in 2.1. introducing economic state depending trading.

for everything below t6 you got rare systems in boom. from a t6 on you can earn 300000-400000 cr (3500-3800 cr/t) ONE WAY trading medicines to war systems ... so you are looking at 2-4 mio per hour doing trade runs. 5-10 hours in a t6 own you a t7, total profit scales with cargo size, so then you are doing 4-8 mio per hour ... 10 hours later you have a t9, and have 7-16 mio per hour ... 10 hours later ... you get the idea.

reputation can be gained by trade profits, too - the numbers for a non-superpower-aligned minor faction are ~2 mio profit to get cordial, ~4 mio profit to get friendly, and ~8 mio profit to get allied.

even if FD would stop any longrange missions (i doubt it) - they also introduced other ways to earn serious money ... not even talking about missions here.

for navy rank - you are right. it is very hard to gain ranks in a "normal way". on my main account it took me 9 month to get rank for a cutter. my secobd account lives without rabk locked ships for that reason. but CR aren't a problem.

Question 1: Rank

Trading and Rare Goods: This has always been explained to me by people doing Power Player. This was back when you could get 50,000,000 a week from it. I don't understand most of what that involves since I really don't enjoy combat. I like seeing the places around the Bubble because I find the stations and systems really exciting, but I'm more of a Trekky than a Star Wars person. Power Player was too much like revisiting EVE. Maybe that's the wrong analogy, but that's how it was sold to me. Just to clarify: there's nothing wrong at all with combat or EVE's giant battles. I LOVED those things. It's just the politics burnt me out.
For rare goods, since it was sold to me through a veil of doing combat with other people... I just shutdown and moved on. I think a lot of people initially are like that. It's a bit frightening to step in and say to people in most online experiences, "Hey I don't know what I'm doing. Can you help me?" They usually just rip your head off. Those are the good experiences. Also... I was making more money than that until recently with some basic Imperial commodities trading: slaves, but then for some reason the systems I was in stopped having the same commodities. It didn't really impact me too much, but it changed my gameplay enough I've been wandering around to find something else to make money on. But ya, with a python and some focus I can still make 10 an hour... it's just very boring. I like seeing the stations, but again, I try not to travel very far since it tends to not profit anything more and the NPCs can now instant re-interdict.

Some of this goes into why I like exploring. More science, more Star Trek, less Star Wars, less EVE. It's not bad either way, but the game can't figure out why type of person I am so I tend to hate on it pretty hard when it gets nippy.

The Rep system doesn't tie in well if you're off doing something on your own. Local Reputation increase (influence?) but not rep... which is beyond stupid.

I hope they don't stop the long range missions. I've seen more of the Bubble doing those than any of the cruddy stuff the rest of the bubble gives. Maybe that's a problem with not enough influence, but then if they paid out more in conjunction with our interaction with that system... I'm not sure the word. Um Empire, Alliance, Federation I think of as Factions or Realms. Again, I play MMOs. Some of this stuff to me is just flavor text for all I get about it. Influence is local. I get that. Reputation is global... for one Faction. There's just a disconnect between what we do with our agency and what the game is aware we have done. Had the game rewarded me for the 500,000,000 I ground out at 700,000 credits a hand in of Trading commodities I'd have quite a lot of Rep. As it is of this very moment I... blew all that on donation missions because there is nothing fun about being Interdicted every bloody inch of a flight between Wu Guinagi and HIP whatever. ...and this is where I get angry. I don't mind at all spending credits I earned, but I do mind not having the game notice I was spending all my time doing stuff for the Imperials since... well... forever. That's just going to be with me a long time. Especially since 2015 players didn't have to go through this stuff. Whatever though. it's done.

From the way you type and sometimes other maybe Reputation is global (for a faction: Empire, Fed, Allie) and Influence is local? I don't know... I get why there are separate things, but I don't see why we have to do missions to get points towards Empire, Alliance, and Federation. It robs me of any determination about where and what I do things. I have to sit down with Inara, figure out who links up with what... get all these little things to coordinate... and a few days later I'm really not happy. Also, I probably haven't figured it out. Instead I'm ready to go to Wu Guinagi and just do data runs all day. And after about a week or two of that you can be darn sure I am hateful, spiteful, and holding a grudge. Pretty much everyone I talk to about has had the same reaction. It's not just that it isn't fun. That's really not the long term problem. It's that it's not respecting that less than two hundred light years away we were doing exactly the same things and got nothing for it. All entirely because OUR trading... determined BY us... avoiding missions because they don't pay anything worth bothering with usually... are now getting nothing out of the game. And game doesn't care. The devs don't get it and we get more like frothy than salty. Largely because it's just breaking the flow. Here we are ready to go off on all this interesting stuff, having dumped loads of time into the game and ships, but now we're forced to reply what we were doing at the start of the just because the devs haven't bothered to tell the game to give us rep when we do stuff for the faction we're working with. Again... I'm pretty angry about this. It wastes my time and I really don't care if it rewards me the best ships in the game. That's not even why I'm doing it. The ships are just a means to and end... getting out into deep space and scratching my head over the interesting stuff: barnacles, rift, etc. I realize that's pretty niche thing to say, but you can take that backward to any aspect of the game. Let's say I figured out a Trade Route all of my own making which pays out 200,000 here or there? Not much on any one thing, but now that I'm up to a Type-9 or beyond I can really load up? So I get 50 tons of this, another 50 of that, and each pays out 200,000 credits? Suddenly I'm starting to make money. Better yet, I'm meandering through the Bubble. This adds variety to the experience of playing instead of figuring out that System A is close enough to B that in n amount of time T I can pull in so much profit P. Sure that has its place, but shouldn't be the ONLY game experience. And this is all tied back to the fact that's nothing linking stuff up. Rep doesn't link up and Trade isn't really 'routed' for say. Or maybe it is, but as far anyone I've ever talked with knows it doesn't. By this point, just to clarify, I'm done complaining in this paragraph. I'm just trying to give enough description to capture the weirdness of this. In real life a trucker takes something across whole continents and gets paid at each different points along the way. Same with big ships hauling whatever. I even checked in on this. I wrote to the Merchant Marines asking things like, I took worked on a boat how would I be paid? It's either something weird like every 17 weeks or more expected like per port. Again, maybe this is in the game and no one has realized it, but if it is in the game it is in in such a way the average person does not comprehend it nor come upon it.

All of the above paragraph leads into where I think people get the most frustrated. They want to go out into the game, but run into this ...weird class wall. It's not a ceiling. You can go up as far as you want really. The problem is lateral. Things that should interact done creating weird confined experiences like how ranking works. Maybe I should say that I don't make a cognitive difference between Ranking and gaining Reputation/Influence because why the hell would you? Further, no one else does either. It doesn't make sense and the game isn't set up in such a way it can. One day you realize you want a Federal Corvette and at that same day you realize, "Oh, this means I am now a newbie again. I now much grind these crappy little missions for weeks on end for and when wait for a random mission to spawn so I can level up!" WOO! ... Or not. I mean, the guy telling me what to do to level up today I ...out ranked. Why? RNG decided to not give him the rank-up mission. So... he's in bed and a bit down about it. I'm ...feeling pretty crappy for getting ahead of him just for that. It kind of was a let down all around. We were going to go meet up and celebrate, but again... this system is just punishing. I think it was supposed to be like real life where just because you're trucking inside the US doesn't mean you aren't still Canadian. Something like that. Therefore ...being Canadian in this example ...walking up to the US naval base and demanding I be able to have a tank isn't going to go over so well. I get that and that's fine. It just... didn't work out mechanically in game that way. Possibly the solution would be something like flying under a banner. If you fly the Imperial Colors or something then you get points towards the imperial navy for doing: maybe 5% of your profits go into the navy instead of your pocket?

As for the rest of my paranoia? What Doc replied last has quieted a lot of that. He's more sane than me all around. I'll just hug what he said like a safety blanket and keep prepping because that's what I've learned to do.