Sandro 2.3 Q&A Summary

[Martian Successor]

If people want to buy the game a second time, more power to them. What they're doing is effectively multiboxing.

What they're doing is effectively paying for an advantage if they are crazy enough to pay £30 for an extra pip. Let's not beat around the bush about this, it isn't exactly pay 2 win but it is pay 2 use a built-in exploit.

More power to them I suppose because it does mean mo money for FD at the end of the day. But let's just be honest about things Brett.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

What they're doing is effectively paying for an advantage if they are crazy enough to pay £30 for an extra pip. Let's not beat around the bush about this, it isn't exactly pay 2 win but it is pay 2 use a built-in exploit.

Plus, there are CMDRs with multiple accounts already, who purchased them for different reasons. One for combat, one for exploration for instance. They'll consider it a free pip.

 

[Martian Successor]

Just been catching up on the stream and saw that bit. To be honest Sandy looked very tired, he was doing his best (and it was brilliant) but I think he spoke out of turn on that one and/or chose his words badly. What he said may be his own personal "off the cuff" (and possibly ill-considered) opinion but I suspect it's a case of "opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Frontier Developments".

Well Brett C has expressed more or less the same opinion. Me thinks Frontier need to make an official statement regarding their official stance on this for the sake of clarity.

 

[Kellan Fell]

Just been catching up on the stream and saw that bit. To be honest Sandy looked very tired, he was doing his best (and it was brilliant) but I think he spoke out of turn on that one and/or chose his words badly. What he said may be his own personal "off the cuff" (and possibly ill-considered) opinion but I suspect it's a case of "opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Frontier Developments".

I hope not, but my gut instinct is that this reflects the thinking of FDev completely. Think about it, they push paint jobs, body kits, weapon colours, and now flight suits and nameplates through the store as additional revenue. If you're willing to buy one or two additional accounts to fill your own multicrew and increase your rewards then this fits into their profit schemes very nicely indeed.

You now own 2 or 3 accounts (and remember they will need to be full Horizon's passes at the very least), plus this is 2 additional chances to sell you ship kits, paint schemes, flight suits etc. It doen't violate thier "no pay to win" ethic as it's not a "quick win" you can buy from the store. It sells additional copies of the game, and just happens to exploit the additional rewards for multi-crew...
Clever, if hypoctitical, marketing ploy. Of course to be really safe you'd have to set up your own private group for you and your alt accounts just to be sure you don't get any interlopers into your ship, but this is potentially a great way of using multi-crew to your advantage (whilst putting money in the FDev coffers) without strictly having any pay to win options.

 

[JW667]

What they're doing is effectively paying for an advantage if they are crazy enough to pay £30 for an extra pip. Let's not beat around the bush about this, it isn't exactly pay 2 win but it is pay 2 use a built-in exploit.

More power to them I suppose because it does mean mo money for FD at the end of the day. But let's just be honest about things Brett.

Technically it's paying for an advantage but common...

Are hordes of players really going to abuse this? And as long as you're flagged as a MC ship, what is the big deal anyway?
Sure it can be done, so some people will use this.
I think you should worry more about encountering a real manned MC ship.

 

[Alec Turner]

I hope not, but my gut instinct is that this reflects the thinking of FDev completely. Think about it, they push paint jobs, body kits, weapon colours, and now flight suits and nameplates through the store as additional revenue. If you're willing to buy one or two additional accounts to fill your own multicrew and increase your rewards then this fits into their profit schemes very nicely indeed.

You now own 2 or 3 accounts (and remember they will need to be full Horizon's passes at the very least), plus this is 2 additional chances to sell you ship kits, paint schemes, flight suits etc. It doen't violate thier "no pay to win" ethic as it's not a "quick win" you can buy from the store. It sells additional copies of the game, and just happens to exploit the additional rewards for multi-crew...
Clever, if hypoctitical, marketing ploy. Of course to be really safe you'd have to set up your own private group for you and your alt accounts just to be sure you don't get any interlopers into your ship, but this is potentially a great way of using multi-crew to your advantage (whilst putting money in the FDev coffers) without strictly having any pay to win options.

The store is exclusively cosmetic. I think FD have been pretty clear on this and personally I think it's a perfectly reasonable and upfront way to earn extra revenue. It's just merch ... you don't want pink lasers? Don't buy pink lasers. I think saying that they "push" these items is a tad unfair.

Buying a separate account however is another matter entirely and the extra pip is clearly a contentious issue.

Me thinks Frontier need to make an official statement regarding their official stance on this for the sake of clarity.

I agree and I'd be really surprised if they don't chip in on this discussion (and Sandro's comment) pretty soon.

 

[Soon(TM)]

Seems to me that Space Legs is at least 4 years away from Sandro said there.

 

[Martian Successor]

Technically it's paying for an advantage but common...

Are hordes of players really going to abuse this? And as long as you're flagged as a MC ship, what is the big deal anyway?
Sure it can be done, so some people will use this.
I think you should worry more about encountering a real manned MC ship.

It doesn't really matter if one player or hordes of players abuse this. It is what it is: you own another account, you now also own another pip with a maximum of two. Boom. Done. A tangible gameplay advantage is now going to be firmly in favour of those with second and third accounts versus those with just one.

As other posters have already mentioned; if this is the way it's going to be then can Frontier please be upfront about it and advertise the fact that they are now selling pips with every 2nd and 3rd account purchased. It means more money for them so there's no point in hiding this new feature that they have willingly added.

If they're not going to stop people multiboxing for the pips, it would be more fair to literally just sell extra pips in the store for the same price as a second copy of the game. At least that would make them more accessible.

How about to give us the opportunity to buy a second commander slot, to an existing account?

Yes, both of these would be convenient.

I don't personally share Frontier's opinion on the AFK second account extra pip thing, but if it's in, let's just go the whole hog and be done with it.

P.S. Also I think that those of us who bought the Chrome Adder last December should automatically get the extra pip, no questions asked.

 

[JW667]

It doesn't really matter if one player or hordes of players abuse this.

Actually, it does.

As other posters have already mentioned; if this is the way it's going to be then can Frontier please be upfront about it and advertise the fact that they are now selling pips with every 2nd and 3rd account purchased. It means more money for them so there's no point in hiding this new feature that they have willingly added.

Yeah sure, like this was it's intended purpose.
Are you seriously suggesting that this feature was created to sell extra accounts / pips?

 

[Martian Successor]

Actually, it does.

And your point of contention is? A built in loop hole is still a loop hole whether someone uses it or not.

Yeah sure, like this was it's intended purpose.
Are you seriously suggesting that this feature was created to sell extra accounts / pips?

Where did you get that assumption? Please read what you're responding to.

If you can somehow magically figure out what is intended or not intended with zero communication from FD then please send me the formula and alchemic magic that you used. I'm not about to quibble with you over what was intended or not because without word from FD that's just a pointless waste of time. Let's stick to dealing with the facts. The very simple fact of the matter is that this exploit will exist and it will favour those with multiple accounts over those without.

IF - note the use of the word "if" - Frontier intends it to be this way or if they simply have no way of stopping it then why shy away from it? Go the whole hog and advertise it so that people know what kind of experience they can expect in terms of the quality of PvP in this game. To bury it under a carpet somewhere like it's a dirty little secret - or worse, to skirt around it with legal technicalities or little white lies - is dishonest in my opinion. Let the customer (first time buyer or otherwise) know full well what is going on before they make a purchase IF it is to be this way.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Just to weigh in here since I was the one that asked the question:

I have a second account. I have a pc capable of running Elite twice at one time. I don't know the logistics of how to do that but worst comes to worst I have a laptop that'd just about survive it on lowest graphics I think.

In the past I've avoided anything even remotely exploit-worthy where sensible, never did Robigo, never did Sothis, never did Draconis, never did the capital ship exploit. I'm legit to the point that I don't mode-switch for profit, I did it a lot when ranking up in Fed/Emp because the alternative is frankly ridiculous and nobody has 6 months spare per faction. I also did it once to get myself a cluster of good long range passenger missions.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that most of the time I like to play as the Devs intended it to be played.

This however puts me in an interesting position: the pip doesn't bother me too much but I understand others concern with PvP, however, my second account I use for roleplay, events and showing other people stuff so they can't crash my main accounts ship.
I've reset the account a few times to change the name (it recently got re-named to "LaveRat" for an upcoming Fuel Rats event at Lavecon 2017) but each reset results in a fresh sidewinder new account. I'd very much like to get that into an Asp by June and will then reset it again to a different name for whatever comes next.
I could get easy profits (42mil odd for the Asp) by just multicrewing it up for a weekend in my Corvette in a Haz Res the week before and after the event. That'd be dandy but I'm not sure it fits with my ethos as explained above.

It'd be incredibly useful from a profit point of view but I'm not sure deep down I agree with it, perhaps it needs an idle timer or something. Or the wings profit share if hit on target thing.


I fully agree multicrewed ships should be shown as such.
I also think one of the massive mis-steps are that powerplay bonds don't get duplicated. That'd have been amazingly useful for the 5 people that still do powerplay, they may even get up to 6 people (yes sarcasm but sadly not far from the truth).

 

[Humbo]

Plus, there are CMDRs with multiple accounts already, who purchased them for different reasons. One for combat, one for exploration for instance. They'll consider it a free pip.

Just to get this straight - the exploit is to purchase an extra account - then have both accounts running simultaneously (on the same machine? - on a separate machine?) just so you get an extra pip?
#EDIT and the duplicate rewards.
I personally don't see ED as a game that you "win" I play for the moment to moment gameplay, so for me and my game style I would never consider this.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Just to get this straight - the exploit is to purchase an extra account - then have both accounts running simultaneously (on the same machine? - on a separate machine?) just so you get an extra pip?
I personally don't see ED as a game that you "win" I play for the moment to moment gameplay, so for me and my game style I would never consider this.

Correct, If I had a few virtual machines running each on lowest graphics tabbed to the taskbar (or 2nd/3rd pc/laptop sat next to me) they could sit in my ship idle and give me an extra 2 pips somewhere like say systems.

Yep it's not a big issue for most people but some are odd enough to do this. The only real downside is they won't be able to do wing combat if doing this and it'll cost them the price of Elite + horizons season again and possibly a 3rd time if they go all in. Apart from that however there are no drawbacks and thats what makes it potentially very overpowered.

 

[Humbo]

Correct, If I had a few virtual machines running each on lowest graphics tabbed to the taskbar (or 2nd/3rd pc/laptop sat next to me) they could sit in my ship idle and give me an extra 2 pips somewhere like say systems.

Yep it's not a big issue for most people but some are odd enough to do this. The only real downside is they won't be able to do wing combat if doing this and it'll cost them the price of Elite + horizons season again and possibly a 3rd time if they go all in. Apart from that however there are no drawbacks and thats what makes it potentially very overpowered.

Thanks Alex,
Again I can't imagine ever doing that, but it would seem using the same rule as wings to prevent idle rewards would help the farming aspect then a timed autokick or confirmation dialogue when a MC is idle to combat the pip exploit.
Cheers
Cmdr Humbo