This is going to be a long rant.
First of all just trying to keep track of all these threads to find out who else is having the same problems as I am is way to time consuming. Yes, there probably is a thread somewhere that speaks to any one individual issue that I might have but lord knows how to find it amongst the myriad of threads, posts, blogs, and what have you in all these sites. I asked Frontier where to post my problems to them and they sent me a link to this site. No specific thread, just this site. So I will start a new thread. Maybe someone who cares will eventually see this. I am into this game above 1000 hours and over $500 so far so I feel that I have given the game a fair chance, which is more by far than what I have received in return. I am very close to bagging this whole thing. Horizons was to go thru beta testing (which I paid to be involved in) and then be released with all new content and the fixes that beta testing came up with. Beta testing lasted less than two weeks (a joke amount of time) and the game came away worse off than before. First off I am doing the Han Solo smuggling thing like many players and would expect that such a profile would be welcome in the game but I have experienced just the opposite. Frontier has done so much to discourage smuggling and make it non-profitable for all but the oldest most experienced players who already have all the money, rank, and large, expensive ships and do not seem to realize that us beginners need a way to earn a million credits an hour. I have heard the older players say that smuggling should be saved for the best of the best and that newbies need not apply but the way I see it is that this is a GAME and that even if I do not have all the skills of Han Solo in real life I play a game so that I can feel like I am that good. Not asking for easy you understand but at least not impossible. All of the high paying smuggling jobs have disappeared or been re-assigned to higher levels of player with much bigger ships. Also I can drive around the galaxy for days without getting scanned or interdicted at all until I pick up an illicit cargo, then I get scanned on the way out the door, again in the next uninhabited system that I jump to on the way to delivery and again in the delivery system itself. This happens all the time. Do you set scan probabilities for ships carrying illicit cargo differently than for ships on normal runs? Do I get a galaxy-wide reputation as a smuggler if I am caught to often and does that affect the amount of random scans a player receives?Also should be able to tell where the scans are originating from. Do scans from only government sources ruin a mission or do random scans from PC's and NPC's also ruin missions? Also need the ability to reinforce cargo hatches. If these smuggling missions are so secret the why are there always NPC's who are trying to find, talk to, track down, or offer me a new deal? Who tells these people? Are they telling the authorities as well? Narcs? And why do you expect that a smuggler would take a mission to deliver a load to a location that is not on the map because it has not been explored as of yet? Does not the client have a map that will tell you that the destination is 150,000 ls out? Why would you think I will smuggle blind? Same thing goes for these missions that make you carry around a cargo for an unspecified length of time until someone informs me where to deliver it? Look, no matter how you slice it most games are about some sort of grinding so those who complain about that should not play games, but there needs to be some balance, a return on your grinding investment as-it-were, that keeps players happy. The ability to earn credits compared with the time invested is vital to gameplay. With ships being the only thing in the game to spend credits on, and ships costing hundreds of millions of credits each, the ability to earn a reasonable amount of credits in a given amount of time is critical to game balance. My personal limit seems to be approximately one million credits an hour. That income ensures me that in a couple of hundred hours of gameplay I can be reasonably sure that I will have earned my next ship. This states a kind of pact between game developers and game players. It should under lie every aspect of a game but should also be very rarely noticed. This game is a constant fight over this pact. OK, next issue... Planetary landings take a long time and leaving a planet can take even longer due to half of all exit destinations will be obscured by the planet itself requiring an unlock of destination, then go to frame drive then finally re-locking your destination. Time vs Money again. And while we are at it what is wrong with the nav package? Nothing is consistent anymore, sometimes even to nearby systems I can lock on a destination and when I jump there the lock might still be there or it might be gone. Lock used to work all the time. When smuggling seconds count, I need to be sure that my nav locked destination has not disappeared on my arrival at the system. I do not have time to search for my destination again that just gives the authorities time to nail me. And in-system we used to be able to unlock a nav lock momentarily to go around something and then the lock would automatically revert to the original lock but now that no longer works. Next there is the burning up near stars problem that has started. I have been toasted several times lately for no apparent reason, there seems to be no direction of escape and of course the nav package suks when near solar or planetary bodies especially when in normal thruster speeds. When having an encounter near such bodies the nav should provide situational awareness as to the location of such bodies. A six or seven mile scan alone is not enough. Why am I constantly slowing down in deep space for stuff that is not there? No planets, moons, stars, or even vessels that I can see yet I briefly slow dow then speed up again, usually at the worst possible time. Speaking of which I thought I understood the half-way point slow down on the way to a destination. Got used to it, expect it, and use it to my advantage but why is it inconsistent? Works sometimes and then does not? Could continue in this vein for much longer... Please fix this stuff or explain to me what is going on? ALSO THERE IS NO DECENT RULE BOOK. Stop relying on the players to figure out your game by trial and error and the post snippets all over the net. Take some responsibility, DO THE WORK and publish a DETAILED book of operating instructions. More than ten pages.
First of all just trying to keep track of all these threads to find out who else is having the same problems as I am is way to time consuming. Yes, there probably is a thread somewhere that speaks to any one individual issue that I might have but lord knows how to find it amongst the myriad of threads, posts, blogs, and what have you in all these sites. I asked Frontier where to post my problems to them and they sent me a link to this site. No specific thread, just this site. So I will start a new thread. Maybe someone who cares will eventually see this. I am into this game above 1000 hours and over $500 so far so I feel that I have given the game a fair chance, which is more by far than what I have received in return. I am very close to bagging this whole thing. Horizons was to go thru beta testing (which I paid to be involved in) and then be released with all new content and the fixes that beta testing came up with. Beta testing lasted less than two weeks (a joke amount of time) and the game came away worse off than before. First off I am doing the Han Solo smuggling thing like many players and would expect that such a profile would be welcome in the game but I have experienced just the opposite. Frontier has done so much to discourage smuggling and make it non-profitable for all but the oldest most experienced players who already have all the money, rank, and large, expensive ships and do not seem to realize that us beginners need a way to earn a million credits an hour. I have heard the older players say that smuggling should be saved for the best of the best and that newbies need not apply but the way I see it is that this is a GAME and that even if I do not have all the skills of Han Solo in real life I play a game so that I can feel like I am that good. Not asking for easy you understand but at least not impossible. All of the high paying smuggling jobs have disappeared or been re-assigned to higher levels of player with much bigger ships. Also I can drive around the galaxy for days without getting scanned or interdicted at all until I pick up an illicit cargo, then I get scanned on the way out the door, again in the next uninhabited system that I jump to on the way to delivery and again in the delivery system itself. This happens all the time. Do you set scan probabilities for ships carrying illicit cargo differently than for ships on normal runs? Do I get a galaxy-wide reputation as a smuggler if I am caught to often and does that affect the amount of random scans a player receives?Also should be able to tell where the scans are originating from. Do scans from only government sources ruin a mission or do random scans from PC's and NPC's also ruin missions? Also need the ability to reinforce cargo hatches. If these smuggling missions are so secret the why are there always NPC's who are trying to find, talk to, track down, or offer me a new deal? Who tells these people? Are they telling the authorities as well? Narcs? And why do you expect that a smuggler would take a mission to deliver a load to a location that is not on the map because it has not been explored as of yet? Does not the client have a map that will tell you that the destination is 150,000 ls out? Why would you think I will smuggle blind? Same thing goes for these missions that make you carry around a cargo for an unspecified length of time until someone informs me where to deliver it? Look, no matter how you slice it most games are about some sort of grinding so those who complain about that should not play games, but there needs to be some balance, a return on your grinding investment as-it-were, that keeps players happy. The ability to earn credits compared with the time invested is vital to gameplay. With ships being the only thing in the game to spend credits on, and ships costing hundreds of millions of credits each, the ability to earn a reasonable amount of credits in a given amount of time is critical to game balance. My personal limit seems to be approximately one million credits an hour. That income ensures me that in a couple of hundred hours of gameplay I can be reasonably sure that I will have earned my next ship. This states a kind of pact between game developers and game players. It should under lie every aspect of a game but should also be very rarely noticed. This game is a constant fight over this pact. OK, next issue... Planetary landings take a long time and leaving a planet can take even longer due to half of all exit destinations will be obscured by the planet itself requiring an unlock of destination, then go to frame drive then finally re-locking your destination. Time vs Money again. And while we are at it what is wrong with the nav package? Nothing is consistent anymore, sometimes even to nearby systems I can lock on a destination and when I jump there the lock might still be there or it might be gone. Lock used to work all the time. When smuggling seconds count, I need to be sure that my nav locked destination has not disappeared on my arrival at the system. I do not have time to search for my destination again that just gives the authorities time to nail me. And in-system we used to be able to unlock a nav lock momentarily to go around something and then the lock would automatically revert to the original lock but now that no longer works. Next there is the burning up near stars problem that has started. I have been toasted several times lately for no apparent reason, there seems to be no direction of escape and of course the nav package suks when near solar or planetary bodies especially when in normal thruster speeds. When having an encounter near such bodies the nav should provide situational awareness as to the location of such bodies. A six or seven mile scan alone is not enough. Why am I constantly slowing down in deep space for stuff that is not there? No planets, moons, stars, or even vessels that I can see yet I briefly slow dow then speed up again, usually at the worst possible time. Speaking of which I thought I understood the half-way point slow down on the way to a destination. Got used to it, expect it, and use it to my advantage but why is it inconsistent? Works sometimes and then does not? Could continue in this vein for much longer... Please fix this stuff or explain to me what is going on? ALSO THERE IS NO DECENT RULE BOOK. Stop relying on the players to figure out your game by trial and error and the post snippets all over the net. Take some responsibility, DO THE WORK and publish a DETAILED book of operating instructions. More than ten pages.
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