This is my first forum post ever, but I feel so strongly about this that I made an account specifically to make this post. I'm not sure if the numbers are final and unable to be changed at this point, but I from what I saw in a recent preview stream of the operations update the hard cap on merc coin earned weekly could genuinely kill my interest to engage with it.
Speaking as someone who has played the game since 2015 and logged about 3300 hours, Elite: Dangerous has always been a grindy game, but not in the way of making you come back every week to earn your 'allowance' (excluding ARX, that system is 'okay' as is). I understand that the intention with a weekly cap is to prevent people from earning every reward within a month and be done with operations altogether, but this method of achieving that has a high chance of killing my interest in engaging with it all that much to begin with.
I'm someone who has a fairly high tolerance to grind as long as I can make progress toward a goal whenever I choose to, not because an arbitrary timer has ticked over and I'm suddenly able to feel like playing a gamemode isn't wasting my time anymore. I have already completed most if not all progressions in the game and I would imagine a lot of others playing this game have to, so there will quite literally be nothing worse than to see the game force me to come back next week to be able to progress again if I hit the cap in the first couple days of the week.
The easiest solution I could come up with for this is to:
-REMOVE the weekly cap
-Reduce the baseline merc coin payout per operation
-Increase the bonus for first completion during a week
This way you can still cater to both people who only get on every so often to play, as they will get the big bonus for first completion for a given week that will make up the bulk of merc coin payouts, AND the people like me who like to play a lot so I can make, at the very least, constant tangible progress on top of the weekly bonus payouts. If this solution then causes problems with the amount of merc coin people have stored, such as being able to purchase any new module/upgrade with merc coin immediately without having to engage with operations when they release, the max stored amount could be lowered, this is also a fairly arbitrary limitation but would be significantly better than having a weekly cap on what can be earned per week.
Again, I'm not sure if the numbers I saw are subject to change but I HIGHLY discourage a weekly cap, all it serves to do is punish more hardcore players. I have played other games that make extensive use of weekly caps and it has driven me AWAY from the game instead of the intended purpose, to make me login every week. Let me earn in-game rewards at the pace I want.
Just to re-iterate so it's perfectly clear, the changes I suggested should provide an almost identical experience to what is currently in the preview build of the game, you'll still get a ton of merc coin for first completions every week, but you WON'T be totally locked out from earning merc coin the moment you hit the 1k cap, even if what you're earning after all the weekly bonuses is not much by comparison.
Edit: I totally forgot to mention the actual prices of each module as well, if this weekly cap is kept for the live release, just to get the cargo racks to go in a; panther, type 8 and a type 11, would take like 2 MONTHS. There is also module reinforcements now seemingly, and module reinforcements go in almost all combat ships. I have 33 ships, and a good 50-60% of those are combat focused, how long will it take to upgrade all those? a year? This would compound over time as well in the case of new/returning players, as they would have a significant gap between players who never stopped playing as they are forced to do nothing but wait for weekly cycles for their allowance to refresh.
Edit #2: A weekly cap would ALSO impact matchmaking, if everyone has already gotten their merc coin allowance for the week, there'll be significantly less people using the matchmaking system to find lobbies, therefore increasing the time to find a lobby if you even can at all. I'm unsure how it works but if it's also based off server location like player instancing is, I live in Australia, there is already barely anyone around in the normal game, what am I supposed to do if I have no one else to play operations with and the majority have gotten their allowance for the week?
Speaking as someone who has played the game since 2015 and logged about 3300 hours, Elite: Dangerous has always been a grindy game, but not in the way of making you come back every week to earn your 'allowance' (excluding ARX, that system is 'okay' as is). I understand that the intention with a weekly cap is to prevent people from earning every reward within a month and be done with operations altogether, but this method of achieving that has a high chance of killing my interest in engaging with it all that much to begin with.
I'm someone who has a fairly high tolerance to grind as long as I can make progress toward a goal whenever I choose to, not because an arbitrary timer has ticked over and I'm suddenly able to feel like playing a gamemode isn't wasting my time anymore. I have already completed most if not all progressions in the game and I would imagine a lot of others playing this game have to, so there will quite literally be nothing worse than to see the game force me to come back next week to be able to progress again if I hit the cap in the first couple days of the week.
The easiest solution I could come up with for this is to:
-REMOVE the weekly cap
-Reduce the baseline merc coin payout per operation
-Increase the bonus for first completion during a week
This way you can still cater to both people who only get on every so often to play, as they will get the big bonus for first completion for a given week that will make up the bulk of merc coin payouts, AND the people like me who like to play a lot so I can make, at the very least, constant tangible progress on top of the weekly bonus payouts. If this solution then causes problems with the amount of merc coin people have stored, such as being able to purchase any new module/upgrade with merc coin immediately without having to engage with operations when they release, the max stored amount could be lowered, this is also a fairly arbitrary limitation but would be significantly better than having a weekly cap on what can be earned per week.
Again, I'm not sure if the numbers I saw are subject to change but I HIGHLY discourage a weekly cap, all it serves to do is punish more hardcore players. I have played other games that make extensive use of weekly caps and it has driven me AWAY from the game instead of the intended purpose, to make me login every week. Let me earn in-game rewards at the pace I want.
Just to re-iterate so it's perfectly clear, the changes I suggested should provide an almost identical experience to what is currently in the preview build of the game, you'll still get a ton of merc coin for first completions every week, but you WON'T be totally locked out from earning merc coin the moment you hit the 1k cap, even if what you're earning after all the weekly bonuses is not much by comparison.
Edit: I totally forgot to mention the actual prices of each module as well, if this weekly cap is kept for the live release, just to get the cargo racks to go in a; panther, type 8 and a type 11, would take like 2 MONTHS. There is also module reinforcements now seemingly, and module reinforcements go in almost all combat ships. I have 33 ships, and a good 50-60% of those are combat focused, how long will it take to upgrade all those? a year? This would compound over time as well in the case of new/returning players, as they would have a significant gap between players who never stopped playing as they are forced to do nothing but wait for weekly cycles for their allowance to refresh.
Edit #2: A weekly cap would ALSO impact matchmaking, if everyone has already gotten their merc coin allowance for the week, there'll be significantly less people using the matchmaking system to find lobbies, therefore increasing the time to find a lobby if you even can at all. I'm unsure how it works but if it's also based off server location like player instancing is, I live in Australia, there is already barely anyone around in the normal game, what am I supposed to do if I have no one else to play operations with and the majority have gotten their allowance for the week?
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